


Hold Me Tight and Fear Not

by Sophia_Prester



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not TRK Compliant, POV Ronan, Ronan & Calla Friendship, Ronan Swears, Serious Injuries, Survivor Guilt, Time Shenanigans, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-05-30 13:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 99,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6426145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Prester/pseuds/Sophia_Prester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Third Sleeper and its minions have been defeated, and Glendower's favor has been won, but it doesn't <em>feel</em> like a victory. Too much was lost in the winning, and Ronan has lost more than he thinks he can bear.</p><p>But there is far more to being the Greywaren - and far more to Cabeswater - than Ronan could ever have imagined, and there is a strange and desperate hope to be found in an old folk song and in the answer to one very simple question: <em>Why do the trees speak Latin?</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this in March knowing full well that it would be jossed at the end of April when _The Raven King_ came out, but I wanted to take the chance to play with some of my headcanons, hopes, and wild guesses. Expect to find a lot of Ronan torture, a lot of Ronan f-bombs, and a wee bit of self-indulgence on my part.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They count the cost of victory. Someone admits guilt. Unexpected things are found in a dream.

There were just two of them, now. 

Ronan and Gansey. Two lost boys alone in the vast space of Monmouth Manufacturing.

The day after tomorrow, right before the winter solstice hit, Ronan would take Gansey to the Barns like they'd agreed. The day after that, Ronan thought he might drive off to where-the-fuck-ever and never come back. Then there wouldn't be any _them_ any more.

It would just be Ronan.

Noah was gone for good. Ronan had no idea if he had finally gone to rest or if he had just vanished into nothingness when Neeve's spell cut his ties to the living world. Either way, he was gone. 

Still, Ronan kept expecting him to turn up again, just like he kept expecting his father to breeze through the door, announcing that surprise, he was alive! Even now, Ronan could hear Niall Lynch explaining that _no, no, it was all just a mistake, it was only a joke, it was merely a little game, you see?_ He had needed to hide for a little while, so he switched himself out for a dream at the last second and everything was now as it had been and should be. 

Any second now, Dad would be home with a new set of wild stories and marvelous gifts, just like always. Any second now, Noah would show up out of nowhere, just like always. Ronan could hear the stupid goofball apologizing for taking so long to come back, only he'd forgotten how, and...

Ronan gritted his teeth. He would not lie to himself. Noah wasn't coming back any more than his father was. He just had to keep telling himself that until he believed it. 

Nothing was the way it was or should be.

Blue was alive, and eventually might be okay-ish, so things didn't suck as much as they could have. From the way Gansey was still moping around, though, you'd think she _had_ died and wasn't now home with her family, recovering from how the Third Sleeper had nearly shattered her.

Yesterday, Gansey said miserably that he thought Blue would be recovering for a very long time. After days of checking in only to be told there was no change, he had of course slept through the call that came to tell him she had finally woken up. When he had called back, Calla had finally snapped and told Gansey to stop calling or she would drive out to Monmouth herself and _make_ him stop. Ronan didn't get why Gansey didn't just go over to Fox Way and Richard Campbell Gansey the Third his way in there and demand to see her. 

Gansey said stiffly that he would respect her family's wishes. Then something in him seemed to collapse and he said he didn't understand why Blue was so mad she didn't even want to talk to him. 

Ronan got it. The runt was more like him than he'd cared to admit for a long time, and he knew that what she was feeling only _looked_ like anger.

Ronan knew because he was angry in the same way, only he was angry at Adam.

He hugged his knees and ground his teeth, because he wouldn't cry and rage, not when Gansey kept hovering around looking like he wanted to _fix_ things. But there was no fixing things. Every time Ronan closed his eyes, he once again found Adam by one of Cabeswater's magical ponds. Ronan had gone looking for him after that last, desperate struggle to tell him that they had won. The cost had been high, but with Adam alongside him, Ronan thought he could bear it. 

What he had imagined finding was an Adam whose eyes lit up to see him, an Adam who could finally let go of Cabeswater's burden now that the Third Sleeper was gone, an Adam he would pull into his arms and kiss with all the passion he had been bottling up for months. 

Instead, he had found Adam slumped over in an awkward heap by the water's edge, hours dead, everything that had made him _Adam_ lost forever.

Both memories played on an endless loop, and Ronan couldn't say which one he hated more, the real one or the fake one. He didn't want to think about Adam at all, not any more.

Ronan wished he'd never met the stupid asshole. He wished he had been cruel enough to drive Adam away when Gansey first started dragging his trailer-trash loser ass around with them. He wished he had never given in and kissed Adam only to be surprised when Adam didn't push him away or punch him but instead kissed him back passionately, breaking off just long enough to drawl a shaky _about damn time, Lynch_ before leaning in for another kiss.

He wished because if none of those things had ever happened, then maybe right now he wouldn't be on the razor edge of going out and doing something that would make Kavinsky look like a fucking model of civility and self-control.

More than all of that, though, Ronan wished he had said something to Adam months earlier, back when he first began to hope that maybe, just maybe he could have what he had been so afraid to want. He wished they could have had far more than just one rough and desperate night together when Ronan was still half-lost in grief over what turned out to be just the first of too many losses. 

Ronan wanted to wish he could wake up tomorrow morning with Adam dozing peacefully right next to him in bed. He wanted to wish that the next morning would be just the same, and the next one, and the one after that, but he wouldn't. He couldn't. It was too dangerous to wish because right now, with his dreams acting the way they were, it might actually happen.

Now that the Third Sleeper was destroyed, Cabeswater was more alive and awake than it had ever been. Every day after they had 'won,' Ronan had woken up surrounded by hundreds of strange and marvelous and beautiful things he didn't remember dreaming about. After just three nights of fractured sleep, his room looked like the Genie's cave from _Aladdin_. The only reason Ronan was out in the living room instead of his bedroom was that there wasn't any room left for _him_.

At least Chainsaw was enjoying all the shiny shit, and Ronan was sure Matthew and Noah would as well.

_Noah. God_ damn _it._

He'd forgotten. Again.

Ronan flopped his head against the back of the couch and let out a loud breath through his teeth. Gansey was still puttering around their living room without stopping to rest, picking up books and clothes and putting them back down again without actually looking at them. He had been doing this for over an hour. To Ronan, it seemed like he was trying to remember how to be himself again. Something in him had broken during that horrible moment when they thought Blue was dead, and it had stayed broken.

"For fuck's sake, stop feeling guilty for being alive, _Dick_ ," Ronan snarled. 

Gansey's familiar, exasperated sigh was more comforting than Ronan wanted to admit. Gansey may or may not have muttered something about pots and kettles. Then he cleared his throat.

"I don't. I don't feel guilty about... about _that_."

Ronan looked up from the couch. Gansey turned a book over and over in his hands as if he didn't know what it was. His stupid glasses had slid halfway down his nose, he looked rumpled and unshowered, and it was hard to believe that he was now king over half a continent at some weird spiritual level. His health was now tied to the land's and the land's to his, and the asshole couldn't even see two feet past his own nose. 

They were all so very, very fucked.

"I just wish..." Gansey started.

"Don't even go there," Ronan snarled, but Gansey pushed on.

"It's only that it isn't fair," he said softly. "We lost so much, and you lost - "

"I _said_ don't go there!" Ronan didn't know if Gansey knew about him and Adam. He didn't want to know.

"Ronan, I - "

"Shut the fuck up, Gansey."

Gansey shut up. He was alive. The girl he loved was alive, even if she was kind of damaged and maybe not speaking to him at the moment. His entire family was still alive. Yeah, he had damn well better shut up.

"You wanna know what _I_ feel guilty about?" Ronan rasped out at last. Gansey didn't say anything, but he was clearly waiting for Ronan to continue. 

There were so many things to feel guilty about, and Ronan thought maybe he should just pull off the band-aid and finally tell Gansey about him and Adam and all the regret over what never really had a chance to be. What came out instead was the one thing he had been refusing to let himself think about for the past ten days - 

_How can it only have been ten days? Has it really been over a week already?_

\- and would now no longer be ignored. 

"I wish I'd taken Declan to see Mom."

And fuck, his voice broke on that last bit, and he had to clench his teeth and press the heels of his hands to his eyes, because even after everything that had happened he was not going to let himself start bawling in front of Richard Campbell Gansey the Third, he was not, he was not, he was _not_.

"Go ahead and tell me 'I told you so,'" Ronan said, throwing the words out like knives. "Go on! You fucking nagged me about it enough!"

So had Matthew. Matthew didn't - _couldn't_ \- know why Ronan had never taken Declan to see their awakened mother, but he had accepted it when Ronan said it wasn't time yet. Now it would never be time, because that Greenmantle bitch had put a bullet in Declan's heart. It had only been four days since the funeral ( _how could it be a four whole days already?_ ), but Ronan knew Matthew would never say anything about it, ever. That just made it worse. It made it all so much worse.

Gansey didn't say anything. He sat down on the couch near but not too near Ronan. Ronan couldn't tell if he was waiting for Ronan to say something or just didn't know what to say.

What _could_ he say? 

Adam had let his soul slip into Cabeswater and he had strayed too far and stayed away too long, just like that stupid Persephone woman. But in dying, Adam had somehow been able to goad Cabeswater into action in a way he couldn't when alive. Ronan and Gansey and Blue and who knows how many other people had only survived because of whatever Adam had done, whatever new fucking deal he'd made with Cabeswater.

Declan had been shot on a whim by a sociopath for no good reason other than he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and she knew he was a Lynch. Ronan hadn't even known Declan was back in Henrietta until the police called him.

One death meant everything and one was completely fucking meaningless, and there was nothing that could make any of it in any way right or worth it. There was so much Ronan wished he had been able to say to each of them.

"What the hell am I supposed to say to Mom when I see her again?" Ronan shouted, and this time he didn't even try to stop the tears. If Gansey tried to hug him, Ronan was going to punch him, king or not.

Gansey did not try to hug him. He did, however, sit quietly nearby until Ronan finally fell asleep.

* * *

The voice came from behind him, warm and familiar and more welcome than anything Ronan could imagine.

"Do you remember me?"

Ronan turned around and his heart nearly stopped from sheer joy.

Adam was there at the edge of the forest, alive and powerful and more beautiful than ever. 

"Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed you," Ronan said. This didn't _feel_ like a dream.

Adam smiled sadly and reached out just as he had that last wonderful, horrible night. This time, they were too far away to touch, but Ronan reached out for him anyway. The instant he did, Adam was suddenly younger than Ronan remembered, frighteningly young and frail and half-starved. The soft smile twisted to something feral and merciless. His face and body blossomed with livid bruises and the smile cracked and blistered. Bark crawled across his face until it became a crude and cruel wooden mask.

The trees hissed and whispered. 

_"Maybe you should."_

* * *

"Owwww..." Ronan sat up. He touched his cheek and his fingers came away sticky. "Fuck!"

Gansey took one look at him, paled, and ran to the bathroom. Ronan heard water running, and as he expected, Gansey came back a moment later with a damp washrag and some antiseptic.

"You look like you lost a battle with a cat," he said.

"Better than having my wrists slit by a night terror... ow!" The antiseptic stung. "I've had worse," Ronan said weakly.

"True. These are shallow - I'm surprised there's even any blood. There's more of it on your fingers than you have left on your face. What happened?"

"What happened is that one of the cast of characters that sometimes shows up in my dreams decided she would get her jollies by trying to claw my eyes out." 

He had collided with Orphan Girl while running away from the Adam-thing. For whatever reason, instead of skulking around being unhelpfully cryptic, she had lunged for his face, screaming in rage. She got in one good scratch before collapsing against him, sobbing and battering his chest.

_"Take me with you, take me with you,"_ she'd sobbed, or at least that's how Ronan had translated the Latin. _"I can't remember... I can't remember... Why didn't you take me_ with _you? It's too late, it's too late..._ "

Ronan rubbed his chest, feeling the lingering ache where those small fists had pounded against his sternum and ribs.

"There are people who show up in your dreams?" Gansey asked, sounding more like Gansey than he had in the past several days.

"Yeah. There's a few of them lurking around Cabeswater, wearing old-timey clothes and shit. A couple of them talk to me, sometimes." Ronan almost said more, but instead shrugged, feigning indifference. _Hey_ , the shrug said, _everyone has a head full of historical re-enactment nerds. It's not like it's any big deal._

Gansey's eyes brightened with curiosity, just as Ronan had hoped. "How peculiar! You never mentioned it before. Do you have any idea why they're there? Or who they are?"

"No fucking clue," Ronan said, knowing his apathy would just egg Gansey on. He felt like he was throwing a rope to a drowning man, and it was the closest to not miserable he'd felt in days. "What sucks is that they usually only speak Latin. Even the ones who look like they escaped from the set of _Les Mis_."

"We never did figure out why the forest speaks Latin," Gansey said, happily skipping down a new tangent. It sounded like he was finally remembering how to be himself. Or maybe he was just glad of the distraction. "I mean, it would make more sense if we were in Europe..."

Ronan remembered how Adam had said he had once sensed how Cabeswater was connected to other forests throughout the world. Maybe all of the forests spoke Latin.

"...one of the Iroquois languages would make more sense, really. And didn't you say the Latin was a bit rough?"

"Yeah. Just one step above Google Translate," Ronan grumbled, quoting one of Adam's wry observations, and Christ... was everything going to remind him of Adam now? Missing Adam was exhausting in a way Ronan could never have imagined. 

Missing Dad was like burning up. This was like burning out. 

Ronan stared down at his lap, not wanting to look up and not see Adam standing there listening to the conversation with amusement and offering his own theories about the Latin. He clenched his fists and was surprised and yet not surprised to find there was something _in_ one of them. 

"What the hell?"

He opened his hand. Gansey pushed his glasses back up so he could see what was in Ronan's hand.

Ronan felt his heart drop to his stomach. He had brought back something else without knowing he'd brought it back. But why _this_? It made no sense.

He had brought back a white gold claddagh ring. The crowned heart between the hands was a smooth and shimmering green gem that looked like dappled forest light turned solid. He had seen it more times than he could count.

"It's beautiful," Gansey said. Then he looked at Ronan, his brows drawing together in concern. "Are you all right? Is it something about the ring? What is it?"

Ronan wanted to hurl the thing through a window. He wanted to hold it so tight it sunk into his flesh and could never be pried loose.

"It's my mom's wedding ring."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Ronan learns some very odd things about his family.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good whiskey is criminally mistreated. Gansey tries to make plans for Christmas and New Year's. Ronan remembers something important.

Gansey didn't even bother to look disapproving when Ronan got up and retrieved a bottle of rare and staggeringly expensive Bushmills whiskey from the treasure hoard in his room. He even let Ronan slosh some into an unwashed coffee mug for him. Ronan couldn't blame Gansey for wanting to get a little drunk. Ronan intended to get _very_ drunk. Instead of grabbing a nearby mug, Ronan cut out the middleman and they drank straight from the bottle.

Including what was left of today, there were only three days left until the winter solstice. At that point, Gansey would drop into a death-like sleep or maybe just actually _die_ and stay that way until sometime in early February. Then he would wake up. Maybe. They had been horribly wrong on shit like this before.

Once he'd got a little booze in him, Gansey started talking. He explained a bit too brightly how the date of his theoretical awakening mapped to an old festival celebrating the beginning of spring and the return of new life. Ronan retorted that this was pure and utter bullshit, February was always fucking freezing and if the Welsh thought it was the beginning of spring, they were cracked in the head.

Ronan had hoped this would get Gansey going off on one of his Professor Gansey diatribes about Imbolc and Candlemas and St. Brigid and symbolism and tradition and blah. Instead, Gansey just went sullenly silent and took another slug of whiskey before holding the mug out for a refill. Again, Ronan couldn't blame him. 

What kind of life would Gansey have going forward, if he was going to have to put everything on hold and go hide and be dead somewhere for six weeks out of every year? This year, Gansey had been able to sell his family on some bullshit about wanting to spend winter break with Ronan and Matthew - it being the Lynch brothers' first Christmas after a tragic loss and so on, but that would only cover his ass through Aglionby's winter break. There was also no getting around the fact that his parents would be expecting a call on Christmas Day.

Next year, there would have to be another excuse. And the next year. And the year after that. The only real solution to the problem was telling the truth, but how?

_Hey, Mom and Dad. You know that Glendower quest thing I was on? Well, I found him, but it turns out there's an unfortunate side-effect._

Ronan did not see that particular conversation going well. At all.

And that was just family. Even they came up with a decent excuse in the next couple of days (Gansey had already vetoed Ronan's suggestion of saying he was in rehab), Gansey might be saying goodbye to passing his second semester classes given the amount of class he would miss. So, goodbye graduation. Being a Gansey might give him some leeway, but at some point there had to be an upper limit to how far that would get him. 

Being a king fucking _sucked_ , in Ronan's humble opinion. At least the Barns would be a safe place for Gansey to stay, tucked away and surrounded by hundreds of other sleeping things.

"Does Blue know?" Ronan asked. He didn't have to specify what he meant. He knew it was all Gansey was thinking about right now.

Gansey nodded. "She was awake when Glendower..." He didn't finish whatever he was about to say. His face was once again an expressionless blank. Ronan didn't know if it was because he was still dealing with everything that had happened three days ago, or if this was all part of him starting to shut down for his long winter's nap. Something about Gansey had been steadily dwindling over the last few days.

Or maybe Ronan was just being paranoid.

"Fuck it. If she hasn't called by tomorrow morning, I'm staging an invasion of Fox Way, and I'm dragging your sorry ass with me."

Ronan would throw the maggot in a sack and haul her to the Barns if need be, if only to make sure she was there before Gansey went to sleep. She wasn't going to decide she was talking to him again only to have it be too late. Ronan had been too late to find his father, too late to say goodbye to his mother, too late to make things right with Declan, too late to save Adam.

He knew what that had done to him, and that meant he knew what it would do to Blue, even if her 'too late' might not be permanent. So, he wasn't going to let it happen.

Also, for all he had been thinking about just driving and never stopping, he knew he didn't really want to. Blue and Matthew would be all he had, at least for a while. And _he_ was all Matthew had, in more ways than Matthew could possibly know.

Gansey actually laughed at Ronan's suggestion of home invasion instead of dismissing it as hideously impolite. Then he said, "Can I see it again? The ring?"

Ronan handed it over. After fiddling with it for the past hour or so, it was just another _thing_ , no longer quite so terrifying to think about.

"This really is beautiful. Do you think your father dreamed it for her?"

"Probably." Ronan thought for a while. He thought he knew why he had brought the ring out of his dreams. There was something that he had been wanting and fearing to ask for several months, now. He hadn't asked because he didn't know if he was more afraid of being right or being wrong. Now, he supposed it didn't matter to anybody but him. Declan was dead and Matthew would love Mom and love Ronan no matter what. 

"Gansey, you knew Mom from before, from when Dad was alive." It wasn't a question, but the way he said it demanded an answer.

Gansey _hmmed_ in affirmation, but he was more intent on the ring than Ronan's question. He turned it this way and that, letting the lamplight catch the stone.

This next part was the hard part. This was what Ronan feared knowing. 

"She's not the same now, is she? It's like she's not... it's like part of her isn't there. Her memory's all over the place, or at least I think it's all over the place. Maybe it's just me. I don't know." Christ, he was babbling like an idiot, but he couldn't stop himself. He'd only had a few swallows of whiskey, but he felt like he'd had half the bottle. "It's like she forgets everything between each visit. Sometimes she's the way she should be, but then she does something that makes it all go hollow. Sometimes I think it's just me being paranoid, or... She wasn't always like that, was she? Was she always so empty?"

_Did she even_ notice _that I never brought Declan to visit her?_

Gansey's hands settled, and Ronan could tell he was paying attention, that he was thinking. 

"Ronan," he said gently, and it was obvious he didn't want to say what he had to say next. "I didn't really get to know your mother past the niceties. If you're asking if I ever suspected she was a dream, why would I? I didn't know anything about what you and your father could do back then. Besides, she was your mother. She was..."

Gansey stopped for a moment before taking a new tack. 

"Did _you_ ever suspect? That she wasn't..."

"If you say 'wasn't real,' I swear I will knock your teeth down your throat." 

He might do so anyway, regardless of what Gansey said next. The swift surge of anger had been comforting. It had made him feel like _Ronan_ again.

Gansey gave him a ragged smile. Then, he tossed back the last of his liquor. "Blame this next part on me being drunk, then." 

"Pfft. You're only buzzed, not drunk - but we can fix that." He went to pour another shot in Gansey's mug, hoping he could really get Gansey to let go, but Gansey yanked the mug back, nearly getting himself baptized with fifty-dollar-an-ounce Irish whiskey.

"Listen. You said your father _made_ your mother. I don't know if that means she's real or not real or something that doesn't even fit into a category. All I know is that I'm glad he did what he did, because it means that you're here." He sounded disgustingly sincere about that last part.

Ronan wasn't sure he was glad he was here. Right now, he thought it would be easier not to be. He took another slug from the bottle. His stomach churned in protest, but he ignored it.

"Don't you think it's creepy that my father made himself the perfect bride?" Ronan goaded, because damn it, a fight would feel good or at least something other miserable and twisted and so damned tired. "Shit, it's like he went out and ordered himself a deluxe model Real Doll or something."

Gansey winced. "Ronan, please..."

"Hey, don't tell me it's not an awesome idea! Make your very own dream girl! It saves all the trouble of dating and wondering if she likes you, if you had her made to spec, right? She never says no, she's always happy, she always puts - "

"Ronan!" Gansey slammed the mug down on the coffee table. "This is your _mother_ you are talking about! What is _wrong_ with you?"

Ronan gave him his most shark-like smile. Maybe Gansey was buzzed enough to push back. Maybe he would even take a swing at Ronan for once. "You tell me, Dick. I'll warn you, though, it might take you a while to run down the entire list."

Instead of pushing back or taking a swing, Gansey merely studied him for a good long while, long enough that Ronan shifted in his seat and looked away, trying to get away from the scrutiny without actually running away. 

"I met your father. You told me story after story about your father. I don't think..." Gansey gave a snarl of exasperation, then started over with whatever he was going to say. "He didn't always do things that were, well, _good_. I know that. You know that. But do you honestly think that someone who would make his sons learn - actually _learn_ \- how to play fiendishly difficult music on several different instruments would _want_ some sort of wind-up-doll for a wife? He loved puzzles and games. You told me about the clue he hid in his original will. Now, do you honestly think someone with a mind like Niall Lynch's would want to make a life and have children with someone who didn't present him with a genuine challenge?"

Ronan drew his knees up to his chest again, wrapping his arms around his legs and letting his head fall forward. Gansey was right. For all that she was amiable and even-tempered and loving, Aurora Lynch was someone Niall Lynch constantly wooed and courted even after years of marriage. She continued to surprise him and always kept him on his best game. According to Dad, half of what Mom said was a clever riddle meant to be puzzled out. She wasn't some biddable, eager-to-please pet. She was someone who could be loved _desperately_.

Ronan knew this but he hadn't wanted to see it. As usual, the only person he could ever lie to was himself. 

"You want to know why I never brought Declan to see her? It's because she's broken. I tried to fix her and I broke her. _That's_ why," Ronan spat out at last. He hadn't put words around it until now, but it was the truth and he could no longer avoid it. "I knew Matthew would be happy she was back, no matter what she was like, but Declan..."

Some hidden, frightened part of him had known that Declan would realize Mom was _wrong_. He would see that Ronan had failed, and it would be just one more failure in a long string of failures, one more thing to make them hate each other.

Oh, God, how he wished he had taken Declan to see her. There were so many things he wished he had done.

"I fucked up, Gansey." His voice was thick with misery. 

He felt the warm weight of Gansey's hand between his shoulders. Instead of shrugging it away, Ronan found himself relaxing into it. He didn't even protest when Gansey gently pried the bottle of Bushmills out of his grasp. Would he ever stop feeling so wrung out?

Gansey cleared his throat. "I'm not sure you did. One thing I noticed... never mind."

"What? Don't give me 'never mind!' Not about this, asshole!" 

Gansey's hand tensed, then relaxed. He rubbed slow circles over Ronan's back. "I was just thinking about Matthew. You didn't fuck _him_ up."

Ronan snickered. "You said the f-word." Joking was less scary than thinking.

The hand on his shoulder turned to a playful shove. Then Gansey got down off the couch to kneel in front of Ronan and look him in the eye. "Ronan, whenever you bring Matthew to Cabeswater, he's _different_. He's scatterbrained. Even before you told me about him being a dream, I noticed it. It's as if he goes, I don't know, out of focus somehow."

"Hate to tell you this, Gansey, but Matty's always been scatterbrained. You wouldn't believe the places he's left his phone." 

So yeah, maybe he did fuck up Matthew, but that's what happens when you're a pre-schooler and you try to make an entire human being from scratch. He should count himself lucky that Matthew could wipe his own ass without help.

Gansey gave him a stern and disapproving look that was so like his old self that Ronan didn't mind. "Yes, but to the point where he can't remember how to use a cell phone? Or remember simple instructions like 'wait by the car' without you going over them multiple times? Do you think Aglionby would have let him in, if he was like that? When he's in Cabeswater, he's just sort of... _there._ But not really. Not all the way. He fades in and out, like..." 

He did not say 'like Noah used to,' but Ronan heard it all the same.

Ronan didn't know if the pounding in his chest was hope or dread. "What are you trying to say, Gansey?"

"It's as if when his body is in Cabeswater, Matthew is just an echo of himself. Whatever it is that makes him, well, _Matthew_ is somewhere else, and all we're getting is a distant, scrambled echo." 

Gansey took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, he couldn't look Ronan in the eye. 

"So... maybe that means whatever makes your mother _your mother_ is somewhere else, too?"

* * *

Ronan sat on a rock in the middle of a clearing, wondering what the hell he was supposed to be trying to dream about that would help Mom.

"Show me," he said in Latin, hoping that this would get a result or maybe bring some helpful forest animals out to show him what to do next. Or maybe the helpful forest animals would trample him into grits, the way they'd done to Barrington Whelk, and wouldn't that solve all his problems in a jiffy?

No one showed up, but a large and shallow puddle slowly oozed into being near his feet. It grew until it was roughly the size and shape of a grave. The water stayed muddy for only a second before the silt settled and the still water reflected the overcast sky above. It looked perfectly blank. It looked like a hole in reality.

Ronan knew that if he looked into the puddle, he would _see_ things. Even without Cabeswater's help, he could see Adam again, collapsed by the water where he had been scrying, skin long gone cold to the touch and sickly pale except for livid bruising where he lay against the ground. 

_Blood pooling,_ Ronan had thought as he collapsed to his knees. _That's what happens when your heart stops beating, and why won't mine stop beating? It wouldn't hurt so fucking much if it would just stop beating._

He had rested his forehead against that cold, pale skin only to be hit by a vivid memory of how warm, how flushed, how alive Adam had been less than a day before as he leaned over Ronan to kiss, to comfort, to love.

_I can't breathe. I can't breathe..._

"I can't do this!" he shouted, not bothering to translate into Latin. "You can't ask me to do _this_." If Cabeswater didn't understand what he meant, then fuck it. Fuck all of it. He lifted his foot to stomp the puddle back into mud.

The dead leaves high above him rustled in a long-suffering sigh, heartbreaking in its familiarity.

"Adam?" For a moment it had sounded like...

The wood went dark, with only the pool of water left in any kind of light. It practically glowed.

"No! Forget it! Fuck you!" Ronan got up, even though he was shaking and feeling like he was halfway out of his own body, and stomped one foot into the pool to break the mirror. It didn't break. Instead of his foot hitting mud, it hit nothing. It felt like falling - falling and then landing in a different dream.

In this dream, it was spring. It was chilly, but the undergrowth was misted with new-sprouted green and the earth smelled dark and rich and _alive_.

Despite the sudden fall, Ronan's shakiness and shortness of breath were gone. His heart no longer felt like it was going to flutter right out of his chest. He almost felt okay, like he'd fallen into a _good_ dream.

" _Memory. History. Now._ " the trees whispered in stilted, beginner's Latin. " _Watch. Go. Remember._."

Ronan watched. He wasn't sure where he was supposed to go or what he was supposed to remember. Maybe the forest would show him where his mother was.

Instead, it showed him a small boy with a thatch of wild, dark curls. Instead of a jacket, the boy had a well-worn and too-large Aran sweater. Ronan watched as the boy played in the forest, humming to himself while using a stick to draw pictures in the loamy black earth. The stupid kid either didn't know or didn't care that there were things in this forest that would happily eat small children. Ronan remembered (was _this_ what he was supposed to remember?) how he used to play in dream forests like this one, not even imagining that there was anything in the whole wide world that could ever hurt him.

"This is nothing new," he informed the forest once he figured out what was going on and who he was looking at. "Why am I watching myself? This is stupid."

Then, he heard the sound of another child, a baby, crying despondently. He and his child self turned towards the source of the woeful crying as one. Ronan knew he didn't remember this, but it still felt eerily familiar.

The two Ronans instinctively ran towards the other child. Without thinking, Ronan moved branches aside to clear the way for his younger self. At one point, Ronan even picked him up and carried him across a stream that was too deep and swift for the little guy to cross safely. The crying continued. It became louder and more hopeless.

They followed a steep, winding trail up and up from the stream. Ronan kept stopping to help his younger self over the rougher and slipperier bits. The trail led them to the top of a hill where a lightning strike had made a charred crack in the earth. The baby was stuck in there, wailing in lonely despair as it flickered in and out of existence. It was a scrawny, fair-haired kid, maybe about three months old. It was swaddled in faded tatters of tan and blue, and half its face was smudged up with dirt - or maybe it was a bruise. Ronan cursed and went to wipe the kid's face and see if it was injured or just dirty. As soon as Ronan touched it, the smudge vanished and the baby stopped flickering. It didn't stop crying, though. If anything, the cries turned to wails.

Young Ronan shouldered his way in to see. Wonderingly, he reached down and rested his hand on the baby's now-clean face. The baby stopped wailing and smiled up at young Ronan. Young Ronan beamed and he stroked the baby's hair.

"It's okay," he lisped, which made Ronan wince. He did not like to think of himself being so young and stupidly innocent. "If you lost your mom and dad, you can share mine. You can come home an' live with me an' Declan, an' we can be your brothers! It's okay!"

What. The. _Fuck?_

His child self's words echoed in his mind. Things that had once been lost - that he had been _told_ to lose - now were found.

_Memory. History. Now._

This had happened before. It was happening again.

"What's your name? Did you forget?" young Ronan asked, as if the baby was old enough to speak.

Well, he wasn't, so Ronan spoke for him. 

"Matthew. His name is Matthew," he said, stiffly reciting lines he had heard a long time ago and had strangely forgotten until just now.

It didn't look like Matthew - the hair was closer to pale ash-blond than gold and the face was the wrong shape for all it seemed hauntingly familiar, but Ronan recognized his baby brother.

Young Ronan nodded, apparently accepting this as truth. "Hi, Matthew!" Then he looked up at Ronan and spoke directly to him for the first time. "How do me and Matthew go home?"

Ronan fought back a bad case of the shakes as he picked Matthew up out of the crack in the ground. Memories poured back in as events played out. "First you gotta sit down, kid. You're not strong enough to hold him on your own."

His younger self started to protest - of course he would protest, he was _Ronan_ \- but Ronan hip-checked the little brat down onto his butt. It was amusing to be on the receiving end of one of his own poisonous glares.

" _Sit_ ," he ordered. "Kid, I cannot tell you how much I hate this crazy time sh-stuff. Now listen up. I'm gonna hand Matthew to you, and you've gotta hold on tight and remember that he's real or you won't bring him back with you. You have to remember that when you wake up, you're going to be holding a baby. A baby who looks a lot like Mom, okay? If he's going to be our brother, he's got to look like us, right?"

Young Ronan nodded solemnly and held out his arms.

"And then you're going to forget this ever fu... uh, that this ever happened for a long, long time. You won't even remember that you were the one who brought Matthew home. You'll remember when you need to. Oh my God, this is _killing_ my brain!"

When Ronan put the baby in his own arms, the baby subtly shifted form. The hair shaded from ash to gold and took on a noticeable curl. Facial features rearranged themselves between heartbeats. The tatters became a familiar yellow and white checkered blanket. The baby was still every bit itself, but now it was Matthew-shaped.

Ronan watched as Ronan and Matthew disappeared back into their shared past. When he woke up, he was going to fucking _chug_ the rest of that whiskey and try to wipe this all from his memory again.

"Good work, Lynch," came a warm, familiar voice from behind him.

Ronan turned, and there he was, cloaked in the shadow of the trees. Even in the darkness, Adam's eyes were bright and happy, and he was alive and whole. 

Ronan stumbled towards him. His legs were buckling under him. He nearly fell, and grabbed a sapling for support. "Adam, please tell me that's really you! I just found Matthew, and it was really Matthew and not a dream. I have no fucking idea what's happening! Please tell me that's you!"

Adam said nothing. He melted back into the shadows before Ronan could touch him, and his eyes went hard and sharp and _old_. Spring turned to deep winter and thorny branches rushed up to form a wall between them. Sleet stung Ronan's face and rattled the dead leaves overhead.

"Stop it! Why can't you leave him alone!" Ronan cried, but Cabeswater didn't listen to him. It hadn't listened to him when the water had risen up to claim Adam's body before Ronan could even try to pick him up.

Once more, Ronan could only watch helplessly as Adam vanished into Cabeswater. Adam had promised his eyes and his hands. The forest had taken everything

" _We must remember. You must remember,_ " the trees whispered in Latin. " _Dream for us, Ronan._ "

"Adam, _please_!" Ronan cried, but then he woke up. Something was in his hand.

Gansey was still there on the couch, blinking away sleep and looking more than a little hung over. "Ronan? What happened? Why were you yelling?"

Ronan opened his hand to see what he had brought back. It was a cassette tape.

**Parrish's Hondayota Alone Time**

It was that fucking mix tape he'd dreamed for Adam because it had been easier to give him stupid shit like this than actually say anything because Ronan was too much of a fucking coward. 

Ronan lifted his arm and went to throw the tape hard against the wall, wanting to see it shatter into a million pieces, wanting to hear the _crack_ , wanting to see the tape unspool violently and flutter to the floor. Instead he swung his hand back around to his chest without letting go of the tape. He hunched over, holding the tape as close and carefully as if he'd brought back another baby raven.

It took him a moment to realize that the strangled cry he heard was his own, and that Gansey was hugging him. Ronan only made a feeble attempt at throwing him off before giving up and giving in.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Gansey said as he stroked Ronan's back, and it didn't matter what Gansey knew or didn't know because Ronan was crying like he hadn't cried in years, he was fucking sobbing, and he just didn't care any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Ronan and Gansey stage their invasion of Fox Way.
> 
> Note: A rare, vintage whiskey like the one Ronan dreamed up could go for well over $1,000 a bottle. Somewhere, my friend Min is sobbing over what the boys did to that Bushmills.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey makes Calla lose a bet. Ronan needs to eat. Blue has something to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has been reading along so far! Chapter 4 is in the final edit phase, and should be up tomorrow. Chapter 5 needs a wee bit of work on one thorny scene, and will go up probably Tuesday or Wednesday. The last three chapters (plus epilogue) are outlined and partially drafted, and will probably start going up next weekend.
> 
> Anyhow, I'd love to hear people's theories about what's going on with Ronan, Matthew, and all the rest of it.

"I have to admit I did, well, wonder about you and Adam," Gansey said once Ronan had finished spilling his guts and generally making a spectacle of himself. "I - I'm sorry."

Ronan never wanted to hear the words 'I'm sorry' again. They didn't mean shit.

"It wasn't even a week," Ronan said. His voice came out muffled because he was hunched over his knees again with his arms crossed over his head. "Hardly counts, right?" 

It hadn't been long enough, and what time there was, was all tangled up with Declan's death. Less than an hour after that first kiss, the police had called.

"It doesn't matter how much time it was or wasn't, and you know it!" Gansey actually sounded angry. He got up and brought Ronan a glass of water. "Drink this. You'll feel better for it."

"Don't want to feel better," Ronan muttered, but he sat up and drank the water anyway. Gansey took the empty glass from him before Ronan had a chance to do anything like throw it. "And we're not going to talk about Adam any more right now. I _can't_. But there's something else that happened while I was asleep. You were right about Matthew."

Gansey blinked. "Really? How so? What do you mean?"

Ronan filled Gansey in on his time and brain-bending adventure with his younger self. Gansey listened dumbstruck, his mouth only firming to a thoughtful, pondering line when Ronan described the lost baby they'd found and what had happened to it. Ronan could practically see the gears turning, but whatever Gansey was thinking, he didn't share it.

"So, what you're saying is that you may not have actually _made_ Matthew? You found him?"

Ronan shrugged and waved one hand through the air. "Found him, rescued him from a baby shelter, what-the-hell-ever." Something about _rescued_ sounded right, however. "I'm just waiting to have a complete freak-out about the fact that I just spent some quality time with younger me that I'm only just now remembering. But yeah, it looks like the only thing I actually dreamed was Matthew's body. I think. And his baby blanket. Matthew himself already existed, kind-of sort-of. Go figure."

"Intriguing," Gansey murmured, and Ronan could tell there was a lot he wasn't saying. At least he was sounding more like _Gansey_.

Ronan checked the time on his phone. It was long past time to think about something else. Like, someone else's problems. "So anyway, now that it's technically tomorrow, how about we go storm your girlfriend's shitty castle like I promised?"

* * *

It probably said something about their state of mind that they drove out to 300 Fox Way at four-thirty in the morning with no real idea of what they would actually _do_ once they got there. Ronan was just glad they didn't get pulled over on the way there. Enough time had passed that he should have sobered up enough, but his reaction times weren't worth shit. Gansey actually had to point out to him that a light had turned green.

The BMW was relatively silent, unlike the late, lamented Pig, so Ronan knew that no one should have heard them when they pulled up to the curb. Even so, the porch light snapped on the instant he cut the engine because, hello, house full of psychics. They looked out at the house for a good five minutes, neither one of them making a move to get out of the car.

"It's not too late to be a coward," Ronan said.

"I have to remind you, Lynch, that this was _your_ idea." Gansey - who looked every bit as nervous as when they went into Cabeswater that last time - took a deep breath, then got out of the car. Ronan followed once he could muster the energy to stand up.

Calla was waiting on the porch for them. "About damn time! It took you two long enough," she snapped.

"What? But... but you said to stop calling!" Gansey protested.

Calla looked down and pinched the bridge of her nose as if trying to stave off a headache. "You were calling us every ten minutes to see if she had woken up yet! Also, I said stop _calling_ and then you stopped listening to me. You should have hauled your sorry carcass out here the instant you got the message she was waking up! There are some conversations you need to have in person, you moron."

"'You moron, your majesty,'" Ronan corrected because he could. Gansey was still gaping like a fish, trying to formulate a reply.

"I can still kick your ass from here to the county line, _your majesty_. Also, you lost me a five dollar bet with Maura when you didn't show up here uninvited two days ago _like you should have_. Idiot." 

Ronan didn't ask how that kind of betting would work, when both people betting were psychic. Maybe they settled the bet three days ago. Anyhow, he gave Gansey the best 'I told you so' smile he could muster.

Calla sighed and waved them both up to the porch. "Anyhow, come inside before you freeze. Blue's asleep, but she'd kill me and Maura if we didn't let you wake her."

They went inside, but only after Ronan gave Gansey a shove forwards to get him moving. Gansey looked to Calla for permission when he got to the foot of the stairs. She nodded. When Ronan tried to follow, he ran into the arm she stuck out to bar his way. She held him there, and Ronan got the feeling he was being examined. Probably because he was.

"Uh-uh. Not _you_ , snake. You and me, we need to talk. I want to take a look at that thing you've got in your pocket."

"I'm sure you do," he said, grinning and waggling his brows. 

Calla did not look amused. "You're light years too young to pull that shit with me. Something's been happening with your dreams the past few days, and we'd be idiots to let shit like that go unexamined. Especially now. So, just show me that ring of yours and let's not do all the obvious 'Hobbit' jokes and just say we did. Now come with me - you smell like you need five or six cups of coffee, and you've got scraps of ghost all over you."

Once Ronan had been herded into the kitchen and given a cup of coffee (there was a pot already waiting instead of the usual Fox Way 'tea'), he handed his mother's ring over to Calla. She cupped it in her palm, lifting and lowering it slightly as if testing its weight.

"Hmm," she said. She put the ring on the table then flicked her fingers at him. "Show me the other thing."

Ronan hesitated but handed over Adam's tape.

Again, Calla said 'hmm,' but this time there was a knowing smirk along with it.

"What? What's wrong with them?"

"What's wrong with them is that they're insisting they're the things themselves. They're not copies. If I didn't know better, I'd swear that you or someone else took them out of dreams _long_ before now. I'm curious to know if someone was to go and look, if these things would _also_ be where they were supposed to be."

Ronan's vision grayed out and he went lightheaded at the thought of breaking into Adam's car (Was it still in the church parking lot? What would happen to it, now?) and looking for the tape. What if it was still there? What if it wasn't? The kitchen started to tilt. Or maybe _he_ started to tilt.

Calla hissed in surprise. "Oh, hell. Come on - let's get you somewhere where you can lie down while I take a closer look at these. You look like hammered shit."

That sounded about right. Ronan didn't fight her as she helped him to his feet. Everything felt wobbly.

Calla looked him straight in the eye, grabbing his chin to make him focus on her and keep him from toppling. "When was the last time you ingested anything that wasn't coffee or booze?"

"Dunno." 

The last thing he actually remembered eating was... He couldn't quite remember. He hadn't wanted to eat for a while, now. 

Only two instances stood out. The most recent was when Adam had insisted he at least eat some cereal and a couple of slices of toast before they went to meet the others at Cabeswater. Two days before that, Blue had handed him a plate full of food at the wake and had stood there staring at him until he finally choked down everything she had given him. She had fussed over him then much like Calla was fussing over him now - no coddling, just an unyielding insistence that he was in shock and he needed to eat before he collapsed.

"Shit. That's all? Come on." 

She marched him to the reading room. Maura and Gwenllian were already in there doing a card reading, but that didn't stop Calla from installing Ronan on the battered old couch. 

"I'm breaking into the Christmas cookie stash," Calla informed the other women. "This moron has eaten next to nothing for the past week. He's crashing. He needs sugar."

She went back to the kitchen. Gwenllian stayed where she was, examining her sharpened nails, but Maura came to check on Ronan.

"I'd ask how you're doing, but I know that's a stupid question, so I won't," she said gently. She sat cross-legged on the floor by the couch so they were just about face to face. "Blue told me what happened to your brother. I'm so sorry." 

Her own eyes were bloodshot and raw. Mourning Mr. Gray, no doubt. Sorting out what he felt about the man's death was low on Ronan's list of priorities, but he did know he felt bad for Maura. Losing people you loved sucked.

"Lost your brother, lost your true love," Gwenllian said, sing-song. "What else is lost in your dreams, little dreamer? What lost things have you found? And once you find it, do you hold it tight or do you throw it away?"

Ronan tried to surge up from the couch, but Maura was able to push him back down with a humiliating lack of effort. 

" _You_ stay right where you are. Gwenllian, don't be awful."

"Why?" she asked, genuinely curious.

Maura sighed and shook her head. "She _is_ trying to help, honestly. For a given value of 'help.' What she said about your dreams, Ronan - what's happening?"

Ronan rolled over so he was facing the back of the couch. "Don't wanna talk about it. Don't wanna talk about any of it. They're dead, so I don't give a shit about lost things or true love or any of it."

She rested a hand on his shoulder. He swatted it away.

"Ronan, I'm so sorry about Adam. Truly, I am."

Of course she fucking knew about that. She probably knew before _he_ did.

"Shut up."

Maura didn't respond. She just got up and went back to her chair. Good. He just wished they'd all shut up and go away.

Gwenllian said something, of course. " _Bene vivit qui bis vivit_ ," she said as if observing the state of the weather. Ronan recognized the saying even though Gwenllian had gotten it the wrong way around.

"Enough with the Latin. It gives me a headache," Calla said as she came back in the room.

"I was simply giving advice," Gwenllian protested with an air of innocence that fooled no one. "It's worth what you pay for it, and oh, I am deep in arrears for all the words I have spilled out."

"That's because your advice is worth precisely jack shit." Calla nudged Ronan until he rolled over to snarl at her. She had a plate of what smelled like gingersnaps. "Eat," she said.

"What if I'm allergic to ginger?"

"What if I'm allergic to your horseshit? Eat." She plopped the plate on his chest and waited for him to pick up a cookie.

He took a grudging bite. Next thing he knew, he had wolfed down five cookies in a row and was starting to feel a little more human again.

"Why Latin?" Maura asked, echoing Gansey's question from yesterday. "Blue and Artemus both said that the forest speaks Latin. Why not Welsh? Why not English?"

Gwenllian shrugged elaborately, setting all the weird crap in her hair bobbing and swaying. "We had scholars with us, so naturally the wood spoke to us in a scholar's tongue. If the forest could only remember one language besides its own - and who could remember more than that after living the same centuries over and over and around and around? Well, then, it would need to be one spoken across the years and across the seas from my time to yours, would it not? And what would the dead speak if not a dead language? It was already dead and putrefying in my time, but the churchmen and scholars kept its moldy corpse propped up so they could whisper their secrets to one another."

"I suppose that makes sense." Maura did not sound convinced, but she did sound disturbed. Ronan thought that was a perfectly natural reaction to anything Gwenllian had to say.

"My father always did wonder why it was such poor Latin, though."

Ronan had wondered much the same thing. He had been tempted to correct the forest's grammar himself once or twice. In theory, Cabeswater would never hurt the Greywaren, but Ronan didn't want to push his luck and wind up getting eaten by a random bear because he got snarky about a wrong declension.

"Perhaps after all those years," Gwenllian mused, "it simply forgot all of its schoolboy lessons."

To his surprise, Ronan actually laughed at that. He blamed the low blood sugar.

Gwenllian rose from her chair and swept over to the couch. She plucked the last cookie from Ronan's fingers.

"Hey! I was going to eat that!"

"So you _do_ listen to what I say, little dreamer. Think well on my words, and I shall consider this," here she raised the cookie in a wild flourish, "my payment."

She shoved the entire cookie into her mouth and went back to her cards, chewing noisily. Ronan tried to think back over what she _had_ said, but he was too tired.

Maura sighed. "This is going to be an _interesting_ Christmas, isn't it?"

"Interesting sucks," Ronan said.

Calla let out a bark of laughter. "For once in your life, snake, you said something I agree with."

* * *

Shortly before sunrise, Gansey came downstairs. He looked haggard and exhausted, but more whole and himself than he had in days. 

"I'll get you some coffee," Maura called out as she headed to the kitchen. "I think you need something stronger than tea. You also need to eat something. Ronan, you too. Cookies are not a meal." 

"Thank you very much, Ms. Sargent." Gansey inclined his head graciously, and for the first time since they had laid Glendower to his final rest, Ronan could see the kingliness in him again.

"How's the... how's Blue doing?"

Gansey's smile said he saw Ronan's deliberate attempt at civility as the gift it was. But then the smile faded.

"She has a long way to go, but she's much better and she believes she'll make a full recovery - physically and spiritually. The important thing is, she's still Blue." Which meant he probably got reamed out at least once for something stupid he said. He sighed. "And now I have to convince her mother to let her come with us to the Barns the day after tomorrow." 

"One, good luck with that. Two, I don't remember inviting her. It's _my_ home."

Gansey just gave him a _look_ and Ronan laughed. 

"C'mon, Gansey. If she wasn't going to come with us, I was going to kidnap her. This just makes it easier. Not as much fun, but easier."

"You sound like you're feeling better," Gansey said. It was close to being a question.

Ronan shrugged. Eating something had helped, not that he'd admit that to Calla. Or Gansey. He had also slept like a rock for at least an hour. He hadn't dreamed, and he hadn't brought anything back. Maybe because it was Fox Way.

"Whatever. You ready to get out of here?"

"No. As you heard, we've been promised breakfast. Also, Blue wants to talk to you."

"What? She does? Why?"

Gansey just guided Ronan towards the staircase. "I honestly have _no idea_. Now promise me you'll be nice."

Ronan stomped up the stairs, muttering that he would promise no such thing.

Blue's room was just as weird as he thought it would be. He scowled at it rather than admitting he kind of liked it. He could imagine a room like this at the Barns. There were also a few things he had dreamed up recently that looked like they could belong here.

Blue was sitting in bed propped up on a multitude of pillows, and she looked even smaller than usual, which meant she looked pretty damn small. Her eyes were still puffy from crying, but the tears were long since wiped away and her smile when she saw him seemed to be genuine, if a little wobbly.

He wondered what she and Gansey had talked about for nearly three hours and he was glad that he would probably never know.

He leaned against the wall in a space between two of her weird trees. "So I hear you've invited yourself over for Christmas," he said.

She started to retort, but he didn't give her the chance.

"Good. You need to be there."

"Thank you, Ronan." Her voice sounded wispy and weak, but she sounded like herself all the same. "And thank you for dragging Gansey over _here_."

"He should've been here days ago. Didn't matter if you were awake or not."

Blue gave a sharp _huff_ of laughter. "Darn straight he should have. But the idiot didn't think he'd be welcome after what happened to me. And to Mr. Gray," she added softly.

Ronan's brows drew together. Gansey hadn't said anything about that to him. "Unless I missed something big, I don't remember either of those things being his fault."

"It's _Gansey_ ," Blue sighed. "It doesn't matter if it was his fault or not - he feels responsible."

"Pfft. There's a surprise. I'll do what I can to knock some sense into him."

"Thank you. Also, good luck. You'll need it," she laughed. Then she went back to being too small and too wispy. "Ronan... What about you? How are you doing?"

He flopped down across the end of her bed without being invited. "Fucking peachy."

He'd meant it to sound breezy and offensive, but his damn voice cracked on him and he knew that she heard it.

"I'm sorry," she said, and he was getting really fucking tired of hearing that. She didn't say anything for a little while after that, and their silence was full to bursting with not talking about Adam.

Ronan was desperate to talk about Adam. He never wanted to talk about Adam again. Then there was the open wound of Declan and the strangeness of his mother and what he'd just learned about Matthew and himself. There was too much and it was crushing him.

"Ronan, I..." Blue swallowed hard, then forged on. "I should have stayed with Adam. I should never have left, but I did." 

Ronan did not want to hear any of this, but once Blue started talking, the words poured out and there was nothing short of violence that could have stopped them. 

"I told Adam he needed someone to be with him while he scryed - he would need someone to guide him back if he got lost. I saw it nearly happen, once, and he almost didn't come back, even with me there to help. I _knew_ what could happen. But he kept saying it would be okay, he said that I needed to be with you and Gansey. To..."

She used the hem of her sheet to wipe away the tears that had started flowing again. Ronan was sick of people crying, whether it was him or someone else. It was stupid and it didn't fix anything.

"To amplify," he said, filling in her silence. "The stunt Gansey had me pull wouldn't have worked without you there to give me and Cabeswater a boost. You know that."

He would have died without her help, plain and simple. The Third Sleeper would have won and would have killed Glendower before he could be fully woken. Even so, it almost _had_ won. It had fractured the part of Blue that was a mirror and nearly killed her, and Ronan could only pull most of what Gansey had asked for out of his dreams. It was barely enough. It was only because Cabeswater suddenly _woke up_ in a terrifying fury that the Sleeper could be stopped long enough for them to use Glendower's favor to put an end to an evil that could have laid waste to the entire continent.

Well, yippee for them. They had saved the world, but Adam was dead, Noah was gone, Blue was going to spend months becoming strong enough to walk again, and Gansey was locked into the role of mystical always-dying king for the rest of what was probably going to be a very long and frustrating life.

"You did the right thing, Blue." It killed him to say it.

Blue's face reddened in anger. "I thought you never lied," she snapped. Did she _want_ him to tell her she'd fucked up? Well, _she_ hadn't.

"You. Did. The. Right. Thing." He looked at the fabric trees - fucking trees, it was always _trees_ \- on her wall. 

"Ronan, I could have - "

"No! You couldn't. Adam made his own damn choices. He always did, him and that stupid, stubborn pride of his. He always had to do things on his own, and you could take your _pity_ and your _charity_ and shove it up your ass. Adam Parrish, army of one! The fucking asshole sent you away and if he died because if it, then that's on him. Not you. You said he knew what could happen, so if he decided to be a stupid fuck and go it alone it was his own fucking fault! What the fuck was he thinking? How the fuck could he do that to us? _What the fuck am I supposed to do now?!_ "

His own words echoed in his mind as he hunched forward, pressing his fists to the sides of his head. What was he was supposed to do now? Now that Adam was gone? Now that his family was fractured, and he had no idea how to help it, and oh God, he wanted Adam back. He wanted Declan back. He wanted his parents back. He wanted to go back and undo every stupid fucking thing he'd ever done.

Someone came to the door to see what all the yelling was about, and he was vaguely aware of Blue sending them away again. She leaned forward and draped herself across his back. She felt barely any heavier than Chainsaw.

"I'm pissed off at him, too," Blue said. Her mouth was right by his ear and he felt the warmth as she spoke. A tear splashed on his neck. "Miles beyond pissed."

Ronan dug his fingers into the blankets and twisted. "He knew what would happen, didn't he? And the asshole went and did it anyway."

He felt her nod. "I was too worried about you and Gansey to put it together until after, but when... when he said goodbye to me, he told me to tell you something for him."

"I don't want to hear it!" he snapped. He sucked in breath after breath, fighting to keep his cool. Eventually, he was no longer losing so badly. "Whatever it is, I can't hear it. Not now."

He expected Blue to chew him out for being a coward, but she didn't. "It will keep," was all she said, gentle and sensible. She let go of him and sat up again. "Now let's talk about the Barns. You realize I'm not going to be much help, physically."

"Matthew's coming with us," Ronan said. It was good to talk about something else. "You can sit around being a useless lump."

"Good. I like Matthew. He's sweet. It's hard to believe he's related to you."

Ronan was tempted to tell her what he had just learned about Matthew, but like Adam's last words, that knowledge could keep a while longer.

"He's a fucking terror. The sweetness is just a cunning disguise."

Blue stuck her tongue out at him, and everything felt halfway to normal for a moment.

"He and Noah would have gotten along frighteningly well, I think," she said.

"Emphasis on the frightening," Ronan said. He closed his eyes for a moment and took another deep, steadying breath. "Christ, I'm going to miss Noah."

It wouldn't last, and Ronan had a nasty suspicion that the _big_ breakdown was yet to come, but his earlier outburst had leached off some of the unbearable pressure. Plus, it was easier to talk about Noah than it was about other things for some reason.

"I am, too," Blue said, and the look on her face confirmed Ronan's suspicion that Blue had had as much of a crush on Noah as Noah had had on her. It was kind of sweet except for the bit where it was also disgustingly sad. "Ronan, there's something I need to tell you that you can't tell Gansey, not yet. But I need you to know because of some things we may need to do when we're at the Barns."

"Like what? That you're madly in love with me and you're going to dump His Majesty and have your way with me as soon as he goes nighty-night?" 

Ronan got a pillow hard across the face for that. The good news was, it looked like Blue's upper body strength hadn't taken too big a hit. 

He winced and rubbed his nose. She had nailed him good. "Sorry - I see the shot, I take the shot. Deal with it. So, what is it, and why can't I tell your boyfriend?"

"I don't know if it's good or horrible that you're acting like _you_ again." Her crooked smile said it was good. Then she stiffened her shoulders and clenched her fists on the coverlet in front of her. "Artemus thinks there might be a way to shorten the time Gansey needs to be asleep and still hold up his end of the bargain Glendower forced him into."

"Heh. Some 'favor' that turned out to be. So, how much time are we talking about here?"

"He's pretty sure it won't be too hard pull it back as far as early January. Epiphany. Maybe even earlier."

That was the best damned news Ronan had heard in days. He ran a quick calculation in his head. "Two weeks and change is way better than six weeks and change. So, why can't you tell him? Because it might not work?"

She nodded. "That and can you imagine how worked up Gansey would get if he thought there was something he could do? Or if we found out right beforehand that we couldn't? Artemus said that his state of mind and how rested he is when he... Well, it'll make a difference in how bad things will be for him while he's gone."

Christ. Ronan hadn't even thought of that aspect of things. He wondered what Gansey's night terrors would look like. Giant mutant hornets, probably. And when Ronan slept, it was only for a few hours at a time, not days and days on end.

"Anyhow, we'll have to watch him this time around and, well, _see_."

That made sense, except...

No, it made horrible, horrible sense.

"Wait. So this means that your house full of crazy psychics, including those creepy Welsh antiques, are planning to come out to _my house_? For _Christmas_?"

Blue's smile needed to be added to the register of Evil Things That Are Totally Evil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: They go to the Barns to settle in for the Solstice, and Ronan learns a bit more about what he's been pulling from his dreams.
> 
> Note: Gwenllian's Latin is a twist on the saying "bis vivit qui bene vivit." In its proper form, it means "S/he who lives well, lives twice."
> 
> Also, Calla's approach to Ronan's barely eating for three days isn't meant to be the best one, just the best one she could think of at the moment. To be honest, after three days of stress-induced fasting, being fed spicy cookies plus a breakfast that - knowing Maura's fondness for butter - isn't exactly low fat, I imagine Ronan would be a very unhappy camper later that day. Poor baby.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They take a road trip. Ronan is surprisingly competent. Calla receives a Solstice gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who is reading along! Chapter Five should be up tomorrow or Wednesday, real life willing, and I'm cranking through the last four chapters.
> 
> Anyhow, I'd love to hear what you all think so far!

The good news was, only Maura, Artemus, and Gwenllian would be staying with them at the Barns. Calla would drop them off and then stop by from time to time to check on things, but otherwise she would stay at Fox Way to make sure no one did anything too flammable, illegal, or hallucinogenic. 

The bad news was that Maura, Artemus, and Gwenllian would be staying with them at the Barns.

They were going in two cars. Matthew would ride with Ronan, of course, because they wouldn't have it any other way. So would Blue and Gansey, because they were sane people who were terrified at the idea of being stuck in a car with Gwenllian for any length of time. Getting Blue into the BMW turned out to be something of a production, but she was small enough that Matthew could easily pick her up and maneuver her into the back seat with her legs across Gansey's lap.

Maura gave Ronan a look that told him exactly how much trouble he would be in if he hit the brakes too hard and sent Blue hurtling into the footwell. Matthew fussed over Blue until he was sure she was settled and comfortable with a blanket over her legs and a pillow behind her back. Gansey smiled indulgently and Ronan grimaced.

"No hitting on Gansey's girlfriend," Ronan hissed as he marched Matthew around to the passenger seat. "Besides, she's too old for you."

Matthew blushed and looked away, mumbling a protestation of innocence. Normally this would have turned into a playful shoving and teasing match, but Matthew's playfulness was subdued, and why wouldn't it be? 

Two weeks ago, Matthew had been giddy over being home for Christmas and about the fact that they could go see Mom on Christmas. He had also been dropping unsubtle hints about what might be a great Christmas surprise for Declan.

Ronan had started to think that, yeah, maybe it would be, even though the idea scared the shit out of him. He had decided to think it over - two weeks was plenty of time.

Two weeks ago, Ronan had been trying to convince Adam to spend Christmas with him and Matthew and Declan because this year, Adam had no place else to go. He'd put it pretty much like that, because he was still too fucking chicken to say what he really wanted to say. As soon as he'd said it, though, he knew he'd said it wrong.

Ronan remembered the tight breaths through flared nostrils and the tensed shoulders as Adam had fought back something deep inside. Probably that stupid pride of his, and that hatred of anything that resembled pity or charity. Adam had gotten a lot better about accepting help over the past few months, and he rarely protested over the gifts Ronan left for him, but Ronan still hadn't one hundred percent figured out what would or wouldn't set him off.

Adam had looked straight at Ronan, and Ronan half-expected him to lash out and storm off or just turn inward and shut Ronan out. But something made Adam pause, and made him think. Adam's face softened and his shoulders suddenly relaxed. It was as if something had finally clicked in his brain and he actually looked happy - and surprised to be happy. It was similar to the look he got when a thorny math problem suddenly became clear as day. 

Instead of declaring that he'd be fine on his own, Adam had smiled and softly said that he would like that, yes, he would like that very much. That was when Ronan kissed him. 

_About damn time, Lynch._

Two weeks ago, Ronan had been thinking it was going to be an _awesome_ Christmas.

Today, Ronan would just as soon shove a stick of dynamite up Christmas's ass and light the fuse.

He took a deep breath to steady himself and checked the rear view mirror. Calla gave him the thumbs up that the car with the crazy psychic people was ready to go, and they hit the road.

After a brief scuffle over music (Ronan loudly vetoed the testosterone-deficient pop-punk crap Matthew had brought along, both Blue and Gansey vetoed EDM because they were losers, and there may or may not have been threats of Murder Squash from both Ronan and Matthew), Ronan shoved a Planxty CD into the player and declared the argument over.

For most of the drive, they listened to the old, familiar music in relative quiet as Ronan took the BMW through its paces down the winding country highways and past snow-dusted fields. The fiddle and mandolin reminded Ronan of his father, but in a good way. It hurt, but it hurt the way an old, sad song hurt.

It was a reminder that missing someone could eventually become something close to bearable.

Ronan caught a few bits of conversation between Blue and Gansey, but for the most part they seemed content just to be sitting close to each other. Matthew watched out the window, his mood lifting visibly every time they passed a familiar landmark. Chainsaw nestled in Matthew's lap, her eyes at half-mast as he idly scratched her head. If she were a cat, she would have been purring.

The music and the easy speed of the car grounded him. For a little while, the crushing tightness in Ronan's chest eased.

When they turned into the drive to the Barns, Gansey reached forward and tapped Ronan on the shoulder.

"Turn down the music a moment. I think I hear something."

Ronan did as he was asked without protest - he thought he had heard something, too. Chainsaw was on the alert, perching on Matthew's knees and lifting her wings to keep her balance. The noise became clearer and clearer, both rasping and percussive.

It was ravens, their croaking and cawing clearly audible through the car windows. As the house came into sight, so did the birds. Scores and scores of ravens were perched on every tree and rooftop, and dozens more circled overhead. One swooped in front of the windshield, startling a curse from Ronan and a harsh cry from Chainsaw. 

"Welcoming committee?" Blue asked nervously.

Ronan thought she had the right of it - the ravens had gathered to greet their king.

As soon as Ronan stopped the car, Chainsaw battered at the window with her wings and beak. Matthew opened the door for her before Ronan could tell the stupid idiot not to.

Chainsaw flew off eagerly to join the other ravens, calling out raucously as if heralding Gansey's arrival. Ronan tried to keep track of her, but soon she was just one more black bird among many. She would come back to him eventually, though. Wouldn't she?

Ronan opened his door and shouted out at the ravens. "If one of you assholes knocks her up, I am coming out here with a shotgun!"

Blue choked with laughter and Matthew cackled. 

Gansey just sighed. "And here I had just been thinking that this was some kind of sacred moment," he deadpanned.

Then there was a silence that should have been filled by a dry comment from Adam.

Ronan got out of the car and slammed the door harder than he meant to, startling a score of ravens into flight. He yanked Blue's door open and pointed at Gansey.

"Come on, let's get the maggot inside. It's cold as balls out here."

Gansey came around to help Ronan get Blue out of the car. He then held Blue bridal-style, which normally would be worth a comment or several, but there was stuff to do.

"Gansey, you know where the family room is, right? Blue, you can camp out on the couch there for now. Matthew, open the door for them, then go downstairs and check the furnace and get it started unless it smells like it's going to blow up again."

Matthew ran off with a cheery, "Aye-aye, sir! Right away sir!"

" _Again?_ " Gansey asked weakly. Blue's eyebrows practically hit her hairline.

"It gets testy if you don't baby it. Anyhow, you know how to work a fireplace, right?"

"I can talk him through it," Blue said when Gansey was too slow to answer.

"Great. The family room will heat up faster if there's a fire going. You two go deal with that. I'll bring the bags in."

God, it felt good to have something physical to do, even if it was just this. The BMW's trunk was crammed full of luggage and groceries. There was also a shopping bag that had better not contain any presents. Christmas was canceled as far as Ronan was concerned. This year, it would just be another sucky day among many sucky days.

Once Gansey was inside the house, the ravens quieted down. Most of them flew off, but Ronan noticed that four of the biggest ones - so big you might think they were vultures - stayed behind, each in a different tree to the north, south, east, and west of the house. An honor guard, maybe. A fifth, much smaller raven glided to his feet and peered up at him sheepishly.

_"Kerah?"_

Ronan glared back down at her. "You are in so much trouble, young lady."

Chainsaw blinked at him, then flew up to his shoulder. She stayed there while he shuttled bags into the house, seemingly reluctant to lose contact with him after her little adventure.

He had just taken in the last load when he heard the crunch of tires on gravel. When the Fox Way car came in sight he waved his arms to show Calla it was okay for her to park closer to the house and block in the BMW. 

"There's such a thing as speed limits," she snapped when she got out of the car. "What happened to me following you?"

"I gave you directions," Ronan said, not even attempting to sound apologetic. "And you got here okay, so what's the problem?"

"The problem is that Maura will have your balls if she thinks you put Blue in danger by driving like a dumbass. The weather report was saying to watch out for black ice."

Ronan cast an uneasy glance to the Fox Way car. Maura was getting something out of the back, but she looked up long enough to give him an absolutely poisonous smile.

"Hey, I had my baby brother in the car. You really think I would do anything stupid? Also, one of the first things I did when I got here was make sure Blue got set up on a nice comfy couch next a roaring fire," he said, making a cross-my-heart gesture. He looked over his shoulder at the chimney and saw no sign of smoke. "Eventually roaring."

Calla narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. "You're making her sleep on a couch?" 

"It's nowhere near bed-time!" Ronan flung his arms out in protest, earning himself a nip on the ear from Chainsaw. "She and her mom can have my parents' old bedroom. It's on the first floor, and it's got its own bathroom with a walk-in shower. There's even a shower stool in there - teak or some shit like that, so get off my case."

Calla's eyes were still narrowed, but the look had changed from accusing to appraising. "Good thinking, snake. You thought this all through before you came up here?"

Ronan shrugged instead of answering. His original thought was that Gansey would have his parents' room, but Blue's waking up and the addition of the Fox Way contingent had changed all that. He'd puzzled through the new arrangements while he was unpacking the car. 

He and Matthew had their own rooms, of course. There was an oversized couch in Dad's study that would do for Artemus. Gwenllian could use the cot in Mom's old sitting room - Ronan didn't have any fond memories of that room and just thinking about a comatose Gansey propped up in there like Mom had been made him want to puke. 

No one would be staying in Declan's old room. That door would stay closed.

"There's a guest suite on the first floor," he said, pointing at one of the house's many odd additions. "Gansey will be staying there."

Calla nodded. The narrowed gaze shifted from appraising to something not too far from approving. "Easier for Blue to visit," she noted. "Good. I'll check the space out later and see what I can do to help prepare. Now, can you show us where the hell to put all the groceries? I'm assuming there's a refrigerator in this place?"

Maura still looked ready to rip him a new one when he walked over to the car, but the look softened at a curt nod from Calla. When they walked in, they smelled the burnt dust odor of freshly lit furnace. Ronan checked the family room, and found Matthew chatting with Blue while Gansey struggled with the fireplace.

"For fuck's sake, put him out of his misery, Matthew, then go clear out a couple of dresser drawers in Mom and Dad's room." Ronan sneered at the failed fire. "Gansey, you are pathetic. Pathetic, I tell you."

He didn't wait for a response and went to help Maura haul in groceries and all the various supplies - arcane and not - that Blue and Gansey might need. He double-checked that Calla wasn't staying overnight (she wasn't), then showed Maura, Artemus and Gwenllian where they would be staying. The only hitch in his plan was that Gwenllian declared that the study suited her better than the sitting room.

Maura put a hand on Ronan's arm when he started to tense and clench his fists, and shook her head. "Choose your battles," she whispered. "And be glad you weren't stuck in a car with her. Worst road trip ever."

Ronan shuddered.

"Exactly," Maura said. She went to check out her temporary living quarters.

Ronan went back to the kitchen. Calla was just putting away the last of the groceries. Maybe it was her freaky touch thing, but she put things away exactly where Mom would have. She barely acknowledged Ronan when he walked in, so he startled when she started talking to him.

"I don't know if you all are doing Christmas or not - "

"We're _not,_ " he spat out.

Calla went stiff and controlled as she continued putting things away, but Ronan didn't think she was angry at him. And if she was, then fuck her.

"I don't blame you," she said after a moment. "This is the first Solstice without Persephone in a long time. And Maura will be _here_. So..." She tried to shrug it off, but Ronan saw a brief spasm of pain cross her face. 

It struck him for the first time that she and Maura and Persephone were, in their own freaky way, a lot like him and Gansey and Adam. He wondered how long they had known each other, and what they had been through together along the way. And now one of them was gone.

What would he, Gansey and Adam have been like in another twenty years, if none of this shit had ever happened?

They would have been something amazing, that was for damn sure. Ronan swallowed hard, trying to push back the anger that came at the unfairness of never getting to see that. Part of him wanted to take every dish in the kitchen and hurl it against a wall. The rest of him was just too damned tired to bother.

When Calla continued, she didn't even try not to sound bitter. "So, it's going to be Hulu, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, and fond memories for me on the longest night of the year. The rest of the gang can go do whatever without me. And if Jimi tries to drag me along for my own good or gets within ten feet of me with a smudge-stick, I will _end_ her," she snarled, and Ronan felt a warm bloom of fellow-feeling.

"Let me know if you need an alibi." 

Calla barked out a laugh. "I may take you up on that. Anyhow, the cookies and fudge that you can eat any damn time and not just on That Day are in the pantry. The tins have Santas on them, but you can ignore that. Or deface them with Sharpie. I don't care."

It was a relief to get sympathy without a fucking 'I'm sorry' riding along. Calla didn't completely suck, Ronan decided.

After Calla had put the last few things away, she crooked her finger at Ronan, beckoning him to the kitchen table. A huge purple purse sat on the table like a half-inflated hot air balloon. The thing could have fit a roast turkey and all the trimmings with room to spare, but Calla was able to pull out what she needed without having to rummage. It was a carefully folded and only slightly crinkled brown paper lunch bag. She handed it to Ronan.

Ronan took it and looked inside. His chest tightened when he saw Adam's tape and his mother's ring. He crumpled the bag shut.

"You must have been really out of it the other day, if you left _those_ behind."

No. It was more that by leaving them behind, he didn't have to think about them.

"I went ahead and took a closer look," she continued. Ronan liked that she didn't apologize for it. "They don't feel like your other dream things, and I wanted to figure out why."

Ronan crossed his arms over his chest. "And?"

"And I don't think they're dreams, even though you probably brought them back like you bring back any other dream." She thought for a moment. " _Did_ you bring them back like any other dream?"

Ronan sat down hard in one of the kitchen chairs. That was the heart of it, wasn't it? "I don't know."

"Ah."

"I can't always control what I bring back, but I always _know_ when I've brought something back, even if it's something I don't want." Or something that could kill him. Or kill Gansey. "I don't remember bringing these things back. I never even _saw_ them when I was dreaming."

Calla pulled out a chair and sat down. "Are there other things you don't remember bringing back?"

Ronan laughed, and it sounded cracked even to him. "Yeah. Just since... just in the past few days. There's so much of it in my room I had to go sleep on the couch. Some of the shit I recognize, but most of it I don't." 

But a few of the things he didn't recognize had been weirdly familiar, like he had read about them somewhere a long time ago.

"Interesting..." she said, in a very Gansey-like way. Ronan suspected that Calla might do a little breaking and entering at Monmouth sometime in the next couple of days. "And what's really strange about you not remembering bringing them back is because of what these things are. These two at least are real things, not like some of the crazy-ass shit I found in this kitchen - and why the hell do you have a spoon with two ends? Anyhow, you might not recognize some of the stuff you brought back, but I bet if you racked your brains, you eventually would."

Ronan almost said 'enough with the suspense,' but thought that if he did, Calla would only dick him around and make him wait even longer in retaliation. It was what _he_ would do. He tried to think of what 'waiting patiently' might look like on him, but his imagination wasn't up to it.

She pointed at the bag. "You may have taken those things from your dreams, but what they _feel_ like are memories," she said. "If you've been thinking about your mother or about your boyfriend, that's probably why you brought them back. They're your memories."

Ronan squeezed the bag so tightly he heard the plastic on the cassette creak. The _your boyfriend_ was like a punch to the solar plexus. He and Adam hadn't even gotten as far as saying what they were to each other. There hadn't been time. They hadn't had any time.

Calla waited quietly while he pulled his shit together (he had to keep his shit together), sitting there as if she had all the time in the world.

Ronan eventually forced his thoughts back to the matter at hand and the two things in the bag. They were memories? It should have been _harder_ to bring back perfect copies of things from memory. He recalled the effort and concentration it took to bring back the Camaro. He remembered a field full of white Mitsubishis, each of them wrong in some way. 

Yeah, the ring and the tape were small, but they were _perfect_. He should never have been able to do that without effort. And to do it without thought?

"Did your father ever say anything about something like this happening?"

Ronan shook his head. Dad also hadn't said anything about finding strange babies and bringing them back. He almost told Calla what he had just learned about Matthew, but he was finding himself more and more reluctant to even think about it to the point that he was hoping he could just forget about it again.

Also, it felt wrong to tell Calla about it when Blue didn't even know that he had pulled Matthew from a dream. He had only told Gansey that Matthew was _his_ after Declan's funeral, when Ronan had been half-smashed and breaking shit, and Gansey was terrified that Ronan was about to go wrap his car around a tree or something. If he hadn't been drunk, he might not have said anything.

Also, at some point, he was going to have to tell Matthew, wasn't he? 

_Damn it._

They sat in silence for a little while longer. It was more tense than companionable, but Ronan found he preferred it that way. It felt more honest. Also, it was silence.

Eventually, Ronan had an idea. He didn't really do gratitude, but it felt right to do something in exchange for the information Calla had given him, even if he didn't know what it meant - yet. Also, she was missing someone just as badly as he was. 

"So, with your Hulu and crappy scotch night, are you wanting to get smashed or..." Ronan wobbled a hand in the air to indicate a range that went from slightly buzzed all the way up to tipsy.

"Mellow and melancholy," Calla declared after thinking it over for a moment. "No point in remembering those who aren't there if you can't remember what you want to remember."

Ronan didn't see the logic or the point in that, but he still held up a finger, quietly telling Calla to hold on a moment. He went into the dining room and to the sideboard where his father kept all the liquor. Most of it was Irish whiskey, of course, but Niall Lynch had never met a hard liquor he didn't like. Ronan didn't know much about scotch, but Dad generally kept all the really special stuff towards the back. He grabbed a bottle of Port Ellen that was probably as old as Calla. 

"Here," he said, all but shoving it at her. "If you're going to wuss out and do 'mellow and melancholy,' at least drink something that doesn't suck. JW Red's only good for killing brain cells."

"You'd know," she snarled, but her eyes had gone very wide indeed when she saw the age on the label. She tucked the bottle into her giant purse. "Thanks, snake. You have the house number - not that idiotic hotline - if anything happens, right?"

He nodded. He had heard what was not said: _Call if you bring anything else back from your dreams. Let me know if you need me to look at something._

"Yeah. And if anything happens back in Henrietta, the spare key to Monmouth is under the downspout on the northeast corner."

Calla gave him a sharp grin, indicating she'd heard what was not said: _Go in and take a look around. See what you can find out._

After Calla left, Ronan picked up the bag of memories, took it up to his room, and shoved it into his nightstand drawer, unopened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Their first day at the Barns has a lot of ups and downs, and Gwenllian finds a new (and loud) way to be annoying.
> 
> Notes: Planxty is an Irish folk band from the 70s. You can hear a bit of them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyE3Mye-eks
> 
> Port Ellen scotch is _extremely_ rare. A vintage bottle can go for as much as six thousand dollars. No, really.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwenllian finds new ways to be annoying. Glendower's gift keeps on giving. The gang works on a craft project.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific warning for this chapter: There's a brief discussion about consent as applied to a completely fictional (in universe) situation.
> 
> Some of you may have noticed that the projected chapter count jumped from nine to ten with this update. Basically, what happened was that this chapter as originally written ended up being much too long while also feeling too rushed. So, I split it into two and gave things room to breathe. 
> 
> Anyhow, chapter six will probably be up on Friday (sliiiiiight chance it will go up tomorrow). Most of it is done, but one scene is in need of a serious overhaul. Chapter seven will - knock on wood - go up this weekend.

Once everyone got settled in and all the bags had gone to the right rooms, there was nothing left that _had_ to be done. 

Ronan had no fucking idea what to do with himself. 

He didn't want to be alone with his thoughts, but he was in no mood for company. 

Everyone else had already found something to do. Maura and Blue were in their bedroom working through Blue's daily strength-building regimen. Artemus was in the guest suite doing _something_ to make sure the space was suitable from a magic-psychic-mystical-whatever perspective. Gwenllian was shut away in Dad's study and singing something creepy at the top of her lungs, because God forbid she actually be helpful. 

As for Matthew and Gansey, they were distracting themselves with a marathon session of Mario Kart. They weren't doing too well, mostly because Chainsaw kept hopping up to peck at the bright moving objects on the screen. Ronan stopped and watched long enough to sneer at their choice of game and be seen sneering. He preferred his virtual car crashes with more blood on the pavement.

"Would you like in on the next round, Ronan?" Gansey asked, because it was the sort of thing he would ask. The kicker was that he was completely sincere.

Ronan scoffed, but before he could say how very much he did _not_ want to play such a lame excuse for a video game, the opening guitar and fiddle of Fairport Convention's _Matty Groves_ blasted through the house at painful volume. Everyone jumped about six inches in the air.

"What the fuck?" Ronan shouted. Chainsaw flew up to the top of the bookshelf with a squawk. Matthew and Gansey's karts wiped out spectacularly. A yelp of angry surprise came from the master bedroom. Just as the lyrics started - _a holiday, a holiday, and the first one of the year..._ \- Maura stormed in, fists clenched and lips pressed into a thin line that promised pain. 

Of course she made a beeline for Ronan.

"It wasn't me!" he protested. "That crazy witch must've figured out Dad's record player - he dreamed it so you can hear it all throughout the house!"

Maura's righteous ire faded into embarrassment. She sighed and raised her hand. "Sorry. That would be my fault," she admitted. "I showed her how to use the record player."

"What? Why the hell would you do that!?"

"It was either that, or she was about to get creative with a very nice vintage record collection in ways I doubt you would appreciate," Maura said solemnly.

"Great. Next time, show her the fucking volume knob." 

He was beyond done with psychics and witches and people playing stupid video games. Checking on the animals would be something to do, and at least they wouldn't try to talk to him. He stalked off, not even stopping to grab his coat on the way outside. 

The sounds of Fairport Convention followed him halfway to the barn where the cows slept on and on and on. It didn't take him long to regret not having his coat, but he thought there was an old coat of his father's hanging in the barn that he could use. Anyway, with all of the sleeping animals bunked in there, the barn would be warm enough on its own, and he wasn't in any danger of dying of hypothermia from just a short walk in the cold.

He wasn't sure what he would do when he got to the barn other than check on the cows. Ronan had made up his mind several days ago that his big project this winter - other than making sure Gansey was safe during his long sleep - would be trying to figure out how to wake up all the other sleeping things on the farm. Once that was done, then maybe he could figure out how to get Mom out of Cabeswater and untie Matthew's life from his own. Except...

Except there was no one who could help him, now. Plus, the situation had become a lot more complicated since several days ago, and he still didn't know what it all meant. He didn't know if he _wanted_ to know.

He glanced to his left, because Adam should have been there walking alongside him, but the only footsteps crunching across the frozen gravel were his own. He kept walking. His chest grew tight and his gut churned. His teeth chattered and he shoved his hands under his armpits to keep his fingers from going numb.

_It wasn't supposed to be like this._

It was supposed to have been Adam spending four whole days out here, for once not having to worry about work or school. They would try to wake the sleeping animals, Adam would get as much rest as he needed, and they would spend hours just making out and enjoying the newness of things between them.

_It wasn't supposed to be like this._

Ronan had started to think there was a chance Declan might be more bearable back home than in Henrietta. Ronan had half expected him to be a prick about Matthew's idea of spending Christmas out at the Barns, but Declan had been so quick to agree that spending four days at their old home didn't count as 'taking up residence,' that Ronan wondered if Declan had been considering the idea long before Matthew brought it up. 

Hell, after telling Ronan the truth about Matthew, Declan hadn't been nearly as much of a douche as he had been. Sometimes he even acted as if Ronan wouldn't automatically fuck up everything he touched.

_Probably because he knew I wouldn't do anything really stupid any more. He knew I would never risk Matthew._

Maybe things would have eventually been something like okay between them again, given enough time. 

Ronan stopped for a moment, screwing his eyes shut and taking a deep, cold breath in through his nose and letting it out through his mouth as he rode out the wave of rage and loss. God, why did _what could have been_ hurt so much more than _what was?_

He wanted to punch something. He wanted to throw something. But there was nothing to punch or throw. So he _couldn't_. And Christ, he was _cold_. He kept walking.

He took another lung-freezing breath. He had to keep his shit together. He _had_ to. There was no other choice. Gansey was depending on him. So was Matthew. So was Blue, in a way. And the shit cherry on top of the shit sundae was that sooner rather than later, Ronan would have to deal with all the legal and financial bullshit that would fall on him now that Declan was gone. 

The really insane part was that even though he had only been eighteen for just over a month, Ronan was now technically Matthew's legal guardian. He would have to manage shit like tuition and teacher conferences (that should have been funnier, given how it would break certain teachers' brains, but it wasn't) and all the rest of it. 

Ronan told himself that if he could keep a newly-hatched baby raven alive, he could do this. He could. He _would_.

_You always wanted me to act like a grown-up, Declan. Too bad you had to fucking get killed to get your wish. Merry Christmas, bro._

He would do this. He would fix Matthew. He would fix Mom.

But how? Shit, he didn't even know what Matthew _was_ any more. And what about Mom? Dad wasn't around to explain, and Adam wasn't there to help him, and Adam wasn't there to figure out how the fuck they were supposed to cover for Gansey for over a month, and what the fuck was he going to say when Gansey's parents inevitably called, demanding to speak to their son and then calling the police and...

Ronan stumbled to a halt, suddenly dizzy and about to hurl. No, it wasn't dizzy, but it was _like_ dizzy. His heart sped up to a million miles an hour. He bent over, knees buckling, hands lacing over his head, trembling, waiting for it to pass, waiting for his heart to slow down, waiting to feel like he was back in his body again.

His skin had gone numb and tingly - he barely even noticed the cold any more - and he was seized with an unbearable urge to _run-move-hit_ even though he could barely stand. He could only take short, shallow breaths. He tried counting to a hundred, telling himself this would pass before he was done. He lost count and started again. Then again. Maybe this wouldn't stop. Maybe he was dying. That was it - he was dying.

He heard someone hurrying towards him over the gravel. The compulsion to run grew screamingly louder but he couldn't move.

"Ronan! Hold on! I'm coming!" It was Gansey. As he drew near, Ronan raised a hand to warn Gansey not to even _think_ of touching him. Ronan knew he would deck anyone who tried to touch him right now.

Gansey slowed to a stop, and Ronan could hear him breathing hard, like he was an eighty-year-old smoker. Everything was getting harder for him the closer they got to the solstice. He had been able to carry Blue into the house earlier that day, but Ronan wasn't sure he'd be able to do that now.

"I happened to look out the window and saw you hunched over and swaying."

Bullshit. Gansey was probably watching out the window ever since Ronan left to keep an eye on him.

"You've been out here a while," Gansey said, still noticeably winded. "Are you all right?"

"What do you think, genius? Fuck, I can't breathe..." Ronan said shakily. Then, the tingling slowly started fading. The not-dizziness finally abated, leaving him feeling drained and groggy instead. "Okay... Okay... Getting better. I got this," he panted.

He straightened slowly and took as deep of a breath as he could. Gansey still stood nearby, one hand slightly lifted as if he wanted to steady Ronan despite being warned not to. The fucker had even brought Ronan's coat with him.

"Panic attack?" It sounded more like a certainty than a question. He handed Ronan the coat.

"It fucking felt like _dying_." Ronan resisted the temptation to tell Gansey to shove his amateur diagnosis up his ass. In a day and a half, Gansey would be gone, and they still weren't a hundred percent sure he would be coming back. 

"That sounds about right," Gansey said ruefully, and Ronan hated the idea that Gansey knew what this shit felt like enough to immediately _get_ what had happened to Ronan. "I suppose it's not surprising, given everything. Let's go back inside where it's warm, unless there's something you needed to do in the cow barn? I can go with - " 

Gansey hissed in pain and clutched his side if stanching a wound. _Shit._

"The cows aren't going anywhere. They can wait," Ronan snapped as he put on his coat. He pointed to the hand that Gansey kept clasped to his side. Gansey's lips were pressed together so tightly they had gone completely pale. "What about you? How long has _that_ been going on?"

"It started acting up this morning, but it hasn't opened yet. I still have time."

Artemus had delivered a nasty bit of news the other day: along with Glendower's 'favor,' Gansey had been granted an echo of Glendower's death wound. It would appear as the solstice approached and then slowly heal until Gansey woke up again. Artemus thought if they could speed the healing, they could shorten Gansey's time away. Ronan hoped to hell he was right.

"Yeah, but not _that_ much time. Fuck, I'm freezing. Let's get inside."

They walked slowly back to the house, Ronan occasionally having to stop so Gansey could keep up.

Gwenllian was still playing Fairport Convention when they got back, but she had moved on from _Matty Groves_ to _Tam Lin_. Also, the volume was at a more ignorable level.

"Mom had 'words' with her," Blue told them, complete with air quotes. Ronan gathered from what she didn't say that it had been epic. "She's also supposed to turn it off before dinner and not turn it on again until after breakfast. I'm thinking there's a fifty percent chance that will actually happen. Which reminds me - Mom wanted to know where you keep the duct tape." 

The song ended with the Fairy Queen wishing she had turned Tam Lin into a tree. Ronan winced at the line - it hit too close to some of his recent nightmares. Then, blessedly, the music stopped.

Of course it started again a second later on the same damned song.

* * *

Their afternoon activity was helping Blue pimp out Mom's old wheelchair. Mom had never used it, but the home care staff had put one in her room as a just-in-case. 

Blue was sewing some old upholstery samples into a seat-cover. Gansey, who was feeling better after Maura had made him drink some foul-smelling tea, twined ribbon and bits of lace through the wheel spokes at Blue's direction. Matthew was making paper flower after paper flower and stringing them onto fishing line. Chainsaw 'helped' by trying to steal ribbons when she wasn't tattering the colored tissue paper Matthew was using.

Ronan sat next to Blue with a blanket draped over his shoulders as he tried to shake the chill that had settled in his bones. His contribution to the effort was staying out of their way. A couple of hours ago, he would have run screaming from this kind of happy horseshit, but now he felt a dozy sort of good will, as if he was too tired to hurt. Also, it felt good to sit here and have things almost be normal. He knew it wouldn't last, though. Not for him. Not for any of them. The others' chatter kept fading into strained silences and pensive looks. Then, someone would say something that would make the others laugh while Ronan managed to crack a faint smile. For a moment, they could forget.

"It needs more sparkly stuff," Matthew said after he hung a flower chain across the back of the wheelchair.

Blue considered this for a moment. "Yes. Yes, it does."

Ronan thought he saw Gansey's shoulders rise and fall in a long-suffering sigh.

" _I_ think it needs more spiky and pointy stuff. Maybe a couple of twirling blades on the axles?" Ronan suggested, earning himself a _look_ from the others.

The music stopped, and all four of them paused, holding their breath and hoping.

Then _Tam Lin_ started again. Ronan cursed and Gansey beat his forehead against the arm of the wheelchair. Matthew just cracked up, damn him.

"How many times is this now?" Blue asked, as Sandy Denny once again began singing about Stupid Janet Who Made Stupid Life Choices.

"Twelve," Gansey said hollowly. "Ronan, please dream her up an iPod or something. For all of our sakes."

The only saving grace was that Gwenllian had latched onto one of the few English folk bands in Dad's music collection, and wasn't ruining Bothy Band or something that actually meant something to Ronan. Ronan liked Fairport Convention well enough, but something about _Tam Lin_ skeeved him out. Maybe it was because of the other versions he had heard. 

"I hate that I'm wondering how much consent was involved when Janet got pregnant," Blue said, echoing his thoughts. She rolled her eyes when Ronan elbowed her and gave her a 'not in front of the children' glare. Yeah, Matthew had known all of the facts of life and then some for a while now, but that wasn't the point. "It's so ambiguous. I suppose it means something that she wanted to get Tam Lin back instead of letting him be tossed into hell."

Ronan thought he caught an unspoken 'like he deserved' at the end of that. 

"Stockholm syndrome? Or maybe she just wanted to keep him around for the child support check - ow!"

Blue had popped him across the back of the head.

"I like how she fights to win Tam Lin back, and how she holds on to him no matter what he changes into," Matthew said, because he was always quick to see the good in everything. Ronan thought the upbeat optimism sounded a little forced this time. "Some of the other versions do it better, though. This one only has him changing into a snake and a lion before changing back into a man. Boring."

"Yeah, but those other versions aren't just flirting with Stockholm Syndrome territory," Ronan muttered. Blue raised an eyebrow, and Ronan nodded grimly, letting her know that she'd read him correctly: those other versions made it pretty clear that Janet had had little to no say-so in her first go-round with Tam Lin.

"In that case, I think I prefer the ambiguity," Blue said, but she didn't look happy about it. "Things might look bad, but there's always the possibility that they weren't."

"What interests me is the shape-changing," Gansey chimed in, clearly desperate to make the discussion less horrible. "You find it in Greek and Mesopotamian myth, and it makes you wonder just how far some of these stories traveled before becoming songs. There's a common motif of holding onto the shape-changer until he runs through all of his shapes and he grants..."

_Grants you a favor_. Just like fucking Glendower.

"... you the answer to your question," Gansey finished. If Matthew or Blue caught his stumbling pause or the sudden tightness in his voice, they didn't show it. But Ronan had known Gansey longer than either of them, and to him it had come through loud and clear.

"Or gets freed from Hell," Matthew added.

Gansey smiled. His hand rested on his side again. "Or that, yes. Thank you, Matthew."

The song ended and started again.

"I wonder what it is about it that she likes so much?" Blue said.

Gansey got up and rested his hands on her shoulders. "Jane, I truly believe that there are some things in life that we would be much happier _not_ knowing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: The good mood from the afternoon goes downhill. Also, there's some breaking and entering.
> 
> Notes: Fairport Convention is an absolutely wonderful English folk rock band from the late sixties (and they're still kinda-sorta going today). While neither Irish nor 100% traditional, they were influential enough in traditional music circles to be a likely candidate for a lot of musicians' record/CD collections.
> 
> For one of the skeevier versions of Tam Lin, try looking up the lyrics to Steeleye Span's version (or maybe not).


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maura stages an intervention. Ronan tries to pick a fight. Matthew learns how to use the clutch pedal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up! Originally, this was supposed to be the second part of the long chapter that got split in two, but I realized that a couple of scenes needed to be moved much earlier in the narrative. The good news is, this means that the next chapter should go up later today - it just needs a thorough edit pass to make sure that there aren't any glitches caused by moving events around.
> 
> Anyhow, I'm still on track to get this thing finished before The Raven King comes out. Just a little more than 2 weeks away! Thank you all for the comments and kudos - I'm glad that people are enjoying this.

Gwenllian played _Tam Lin_ two and a half more times before Maura stomped her way to the study to have another set of 'words' with her. The music stopped, but the silence wasn't as much of a relief as it should have been.

Now that the fucking song was no longer there to annoy them, it was even more hideously obvious that things were _not_ the way they should have been. 

Blue's art project should have been tarting up something that wasn't a fucking wheelchair. Noah should have been making a pest of himself with the glitter and egging Matthew on to put more on the flowers or dump a handful down Ronan's back. 

Ronan should - if he leaned over just a little bit - have been able to see Adam sitting cross-legged on the floor across from Gansey. Adam would be hunched over his work, his lower lip snagged lightly on his teeth as he meticulously threaded ribbon and lace through wheel spokes. No, he would be adjusting the chair itself, making sure everything turned smoothly or held together snugly. He would fix the one foot rest that didn't unfold all the way.

Then he would look up and catch Ronan watching him. Adam would -

Adam would do nothing. He wasn't there.

Ronan glared at the wheelchair and its exuberance of flowers and ribbons.

"That thing crossed the line from over the top to trashy about five minutes ago," he snarled. "Right now, what it needs is kerosene and a match."

Blue narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms meaningfully, but she didn't bite. She wanted to, though - he could see it in the flush that rose to her face. So why didn't she?

Gansey looked confused, but it quickly shifted to classic Richard Gansey III disappointment at an uncalled-for breach in civility. Ronan bared his teeth in something that could only technically be called a smile, daring Gansey to go ahead, _try_ to lecture him.

"Hey, Ronan - you said you'd give me a driving lesson while we were here," Matthew chimed in before Gansey could get more than a single word out. He rolled to his feet and shook out his arms. "Wanna go out while we've still got daylight?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," Gansey said. His disappointment had shifted to something more like concern, which was a hundred times more annoying, in Ronan's opinion. Gansey had plenty of other shit to worry about. Ronan could take care of himself.

"Whatever. Let's go." Ronan got up, tossed his blanket over Gansey's head, and headed out to the front hall. Matthew joined him a second later, and they grabbed their coats and headed out into the cold.

"Real subtle, Matthew." It wasn't a complaint. Ronan hadn't known how much he needed to be out of there until he was out.

"I wasn't trying to be. You were trying to pick a fight, so I got you out of there." Matthew didn't sound the slightest bit critical. If anything, he seemed pleased by Ronan's show of churlishness. "Besides, you _did_ promise me driving lessons, remember?"

"I don't remember it being a promise." Even so, Ronan headed towards the car. 

"Sure it was!" With no warning, Matthew reached up and rubbed the top of Ronan's head, hard. He jumped away laughing before Ronan could swat him. 

"What the fuck was that for?" Ronan snapped, but he couldn't help grinning. Even after everything, Matthew was still Matthew...

...whatever that meant.

Fuck it. He would worry about that later.

Matthew stood patiently by the driver's side door. " _That_ was for trying to pick a fight with Blue," he informed Ronan solemnly. He held out a cupped hand. "Keys?"

"They're in the car." 

Leaving the keys in the car had been an easy habit to fall back into the more he came back to the Barns. Back when the place was _awake_ and there was always something that needed doing, you never knew when a vehicle might need to be moved. Ronan got into the passenger seat. 

"Let's see if you remember how to start the damned thing."

Matthew could drive an automatic well enough to get a vehicle from one part of the farm to another without hitting anything or anyone, but the BMW's clutch was still an unfathomable mystery to him. For some reason, he just couldn't get a feel for it.

The first few times, Matthew was too quick to release the clutch, stalling the car and earning a torrent of profanity from his brother.

"I got this, I got this..." Mathew said before trying again. 

Before Ronan could warn him not to release the clutch _too_ slowly, Matthew did just that and the BMW leapt backwards, nearly sending their heads into the dashboard. Matthew braked hard and fast, and the car stalled again. Shaking, Matthew shifted back into neutral and put the parking brake on.

Matthew slumped forward and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. "I _don't_ got this. I feel like I should _know_ this."

"You don't completely suck," Ronan said. His own first attempts had been so horrible that Dad had put a moratorium on lessons for an entire week so their tempers could cool enough that the two of them didn't launch World War Three. "You just gotta get a feel for the clutch - find that sweet spot. It's different on every car. So, you ready to try again?"

Matthew shook his head, forehead still planted on the steering wheel. All of the eagerness and cheer had drained out of him in a rush.

"Dammit, don't punk out on me! At least get the car started so we don't fucking freeze to death out here. You're going to start the car, and you're going to drive me around the farm, got it?"

"I should know how to do this," Matthew said again plaintively. 

"Which is why I'm giving you lessons, genius. Now sit up and try again."

This time, Matthew got the car started, but he didn't seem as happy about it as he should have. Instead of pulling out into the driveway, he left the parking brake on and turned on the heat.

"Can we just stay here for a minute? Please?" he asked, voice small. Alarm bells started going off in Ronan's mind.

"What's wrong?"

"I was having a lot of fun in there, with Blue and Gansey. I like them."

"Yeah - and you could be a little less obvious about liking Blue. What're you getting at, Matthew?"

Matthew clenched the wheel. Ronan caught glints of light on his hands from the sparkles he'd been using. 

"I don't understand. It's all wrong. How can I be having fun after everything that happened? It's like, one minute everything _sucks_ , and the next it's like nothing's wrong." He thumped the wheel as he spoke, punctuating his frustration.

Ronan knew exactly what he meant. "Yeah. And it's fucking exhausting."

Matthew nodded. "And sometimes I almost forget that Declan..." He swallowed hard. "But other times it's all I can think about, and then I feel bad that I almost forgot."

Ronan reached over and put a hand on his shoulder, giving a firm squeeze. It was easier than trying to figure out what he could say that wouldn't make things worse.

"When Dad died, it wasn't like this," Matthew went on, and Ronan forced himself to stay there and listen. His hand remained on Matthew's shoulder, more to anchor himself than to steady Matthew. Matthew didn't need him storming out, not now, no matter how much Ronan didn't want to hear any of this. 

"I was sad, but more than that, I... I was scared." He sounded scared, now, voice shaking. "So scared. All the time. Mom wouldn't wake up and we didn't know what was wrong with her or if she was going to die, too. And we couldn't even go _home_ any more! And - "

Matthew stopped short, biting off the words before they could get out.

"And what?" Ronan demanded. Something about the guilty look in Matthew's eyes told him that this was important, no matter how much he didn't want to hear it and Matthew didn't want to say it.

Matthew looked at him, quietly asking for permission and maybe for forgiveness. Ronan hesitated, then nodded.

"You weren't _you_ any more," Matthew said softly. "You were different. It was like you went away, just like Mom."

 _Fuck_. Ronan's head thumped back against the headrest and he slammed his fist against the door panel. He had, hadn't he? As long as Declan was there to look after Matthew, Ronan could go do what-the-fuck-ever and burn through his own grief on his own. He could lose himself in booze and racing and fighting and rage, and none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was not seeing Dad's blood and brains all over the driveway. Everything else could just go to hell.

"I'm - " He didn't want to say 'I'm sorry.' It didn't fix anything. "I was a fucking idiot. I didn't think. I should have..."

Should have wasn't the same as could have. Maybe it would have been different if Declan could have just been fucking honest about what he knew about Dad and about Matthew and about Ronan. Maybe it wouldn't have been. Who the hell knew?

"The weird thing is, there was part of me that knew you'd be okay, somehow," Matthew continued shakily. "I don't know how, but I _knew_. Like it had already happened and I knew how it ended. Even when I thought you had tried to..." He was silent for a little while longer.

Ronan waited. 

Matthew started laughing, high and a little hysterical. "I mean, now I know it was just one of your dreams trying to kill you. And _wow_ , I still don't get how this is all really real, you know? 'Just one of your dreams trying to kill you.' Like you caught the flu or something. Crazy, huh?" He stopped and looked at Ronan, and something about him looked strangely adult. Not in the way Gansey would suddenly take on decades of authority, but like he wasn't just a kid. "The problem is that this time, I don't _know_ if you'll be okay." 

_And I'm scared,_ he didn't say.

"I'm not going to do anything stupid," Ronan said through gritted teeth. His fist clenched, but there was nothing to hit that would make him feel any better. "I won't. I'm not going to lose my shit like I did last time. I'm not going away."

Matthew's sad smile broke Ronan's heart into a million guilty pieces. "But you _did_. This is the first time I've spent alone with you since - "

Since Adam died. Shit. _Shit._

He'd already fucked this up. Ronan knew Matthew well enough to hear all the things he would never ask out loud.

_Do you miss Adam more Declan?_

No. It wasn't a case of more than or less than. It was different. It was like trying to compare hurricanes and earthquakes.

_Why did you forget about me?_

He hadn't. He had just been so fucking lost in his own misery he didn't know which way was up any more. It was as true two years ago as it was two weeks ago.

"I know you still haven't told me everything that happened when you guys went into Mom's forest that last time, and I get it. I do. I know Adam died in there, and he was one of your best friends - "

Ronan lifted a hand, cutting off whatever Matthew was going to say next and telling him to wait. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see Matthew's face.

"No. We were more than that." 

Matthew deserved to know. More than that, Ronan needed him to understand.

"Huh? What do you... _oh._ "

"Yeah. 'Oh.' So yeah, I checked out on you. It sucks that I did that to you. I promise I won't let it happen again," he muttered.

Matthew stayed lost in thought for a moment, and Ronan could practically see ideas and thoughts slotting into new contexts.

"I liked Adam. He was nice." There was a lot being said in that handful of softly spoken words. It told Ronan that if things had been different, Matthew would have been wildly happy for him, and that made everything worse and better at the same time. "Um, was that why you and Declan..."

Ronan shrugged. "That was some of it, yeah." There had been plenty of cold and suspicious looks and snide comments over the past year, even before Ronan was willing to admit things to himself. "But it wasn't all of it. Look, you know Declan and I didn't get along. I wish I could say things were different, but I can't."

Even before Declan had turned into a dictatorial control freak and Ronan had - to be brutally honest - gone completely off the rails, they had had their epic clashes. They had been too alike in some ways and too different in others, and that wasn't even getting into all the parental favoritism shit.

But there had been good times, too. Good times that were becoming damnably easier to remember. There had been more good times than bad, hadn't there? How could he have forgotten that in just two years?

God, he missed the music. So much. So damned much. None of the fighting mattered then. None of the resentment. Maybe they could have had that back, this year.

Matthew nodded, his eyes bright. "They were starting to be different, though? A little? Weren't they?"

"Maybe." 

'Maybe' was what sucked the most about this. They would never know if this Christmas would have been just another three-ring shit-show of family dysfunction or if it would have been the first step back towards something like the way they had been. 

If there would have been music again.

There was one more thing Ronan needed to say, that Matthew needed to hear.

"I should have taken him to see Mom. I'm always going to hate that I didn't."

From the way Matthew tensed, then relaxed, Ronan knew he'd been right. Matthew had been nursing that particular hurt for a while now.

"I know I should have, but... Look. Those times I took you to Cabeswater to see Mom, how did she seem to you?"

Matthew blinked in surprise. Whatever he'd been expecting Ronan to say, it wasn't that. "Uh, fine? Happy? I guess? It's hard to say. It, well it doesn't feel a hundred percent _real_. Whenever we go there, it always feels like I'm in a dream or something, you know, the kind you forget most of when you wake up. What? What did I say?"

Ronan shook his head and tried to shake off the feeling of hundreds of icy-footed ants marching down his spine. "Do you... No. Never mind. Forget it."

"What? It's not supposed to feel like that?" 

"It's a magical forest that speaks shitty Latin. Who the fuck knows how it's supposed to feel? Anyhow, we'll go see Mom in a couple of days, okay? I promise. Now are we done sitting here burning gas and pretending this is the Dr. Phil show?"

Matthew laughed shakily. Then he straightened up and squared his shoulders. He slapped his hands on the steering wheel. "Okay! Let's try this again!"

Ronan was relieved that he sounded more like himself again.

This time, Matthew started the car on the first attempt. He smiled as if he had just lit the moon, and for the next little while, while they drove around the farm and practiced stopping and starting and shifting, it was easy to pretend everything was okay. They didn't forget, but they could just put everything aside for a while.

When they got back inside the house. Matthew was quick to shuck off his coat and hurry to the family room as if trying to put distance between himself and Ronan. It would have been a little worrying, except Matthew was snickering. That made it a _lot_ worrying.

Ronan figured it out when he took off his coat and saw sparkly shit all over the back of the collar. He remembered that retaliatory head-rub, and tentatively reached up to run his hand over the stubble on the back of his head. When he looked at his hand, it was covered in glitter. _Pink_ glitter.

_"Goddammit, Matthew!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: There's an awkward 'family' dinner, and we hear back from Calla.
> 
> Notes: The less said about my own attempts to learn to drive a manual transmission, the better.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwenllian causes a scene. Calla commits a crime. Ronan remembers better times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here is what was originally the second half of the mega chapter that I split in two. Starting with this chapter, all of the plot dominoes are lined up and are starting to fall. 
> 
> The last few chapters should start going up this weekend, if all goes well.
> 
> Thank you all for sticking with this so far - I would love to hear what you think!

Maura cooked for them that night, but she made it crystal clear that just because she was the only sane adult female on the premises, the others were not to count on her cooking for them every night.

Ronan did a quick count on who would be left to do the cooking, and didn't much like the results.

"Right on, Mom!" Blue cheered, jamming a puny fist in the air. Her wheelchair was even more extravagantly bedecked than the last time Ronan had seen it. Gansey had found some old Mardi Gras beads for her, and Blue had laced them through the ropes of paper flowers. From the way they glittered when there was no light to make them glitter, Ronan suspected that most of them were dream things.

"Says the person who's automatically exempted from cooking duty," Ronan snarled. 

Blue shook her raised fist in his direction and he cowered in mock fear, which only made her snarl at him.

"Just wait until it's _my_ turn to cook, maggot," he threatened with a smile, and was pleased to see the color drain from her face as she no doubt pondered all the horrible ways that might turn out.

"And what will you create for us, little dreamer?" Gwenllian asked in the manner of someone whose questions were meant to elicit anxiety rather than answers. 

"Oh, God. I didn't order a side order of crazy with my dinner," Blue muttered through clenched teeth.

Ronan did his best to ignore Gwenllian. Matthew was staring at her and leaning away as if she might explode.

"Or will you find something? You've been doing a lot of finding lately, haven't you? So many lost things and lost little ones. So afraid, so alone in the dark and the cold," she said and oh _fuck_ she was looking right at Matthew...

Ronan surged to his feet. "Lady, if I were you, I'd fucking can it before -"

She peered at him down that long nose of hers. "Before? Before it's too late, or before I speak the truth? Which do you mean?"

 _Shit, shit, shit..._ There was no fucking way he was going to let her spill the truth about Matthew. It wasn't her fucking place, and this was not the fucking time. 

"Oh, but if you would only listen to poor Gwen! The things she knows, the things she's seen, lying awake all those years. All the ones you and your bastard father brought out of your dreams. That pretty, pretty raven. Do you remember how I made her sing? Who else do you think I can make sing?

"Shut. The fuck. Up." He started around the table towards her, and there was going to be blood, but Gansey caught his eye and gave a sharp nod.

 _I've got this,_ he told Ronan without having to say anything. Ronan stopped, but he kept his eyes fixed on her. If she said one more fucking word he would _make_ her shut up.

"Gwenllian, please." Even though Gansey was clearly short of breath, his voice carried through the kitchen like the tolling of a bell. All attention turned to him as he raised one hand as if in benediction or prohibition. "This is my last meal with my friends before the solstice, and I would ask that I be able to enjoy it in peace."

Gwenllian's nostrils flared. "Since you _ask_ rather than demand, then I shall leave you in _peace_ , although there are some here," she glared at Ronan, "who would find peace faster if they listened. I will find a better time to offer my counsel."

Her expression changed to one of pure contempt before she took her plate, tossed her head - sending a pencil and a AAA battery flying into a corner - and flounced off, singing random snatches from Next Time, Try Staying Out Of The Fucking Woods, Stupid Janet.

Of course, the effect of the flounce was ruined when Gwenllian scurried back into the kitchen two seconds later, stole the ketchup, and scurried out again.

"Well, at least _that's_ over," Maura said. She gave Blue her plate, fixed her own, and sat down.

By silent agreement, no one said anything about what had happened, although the uneasiness Gwenllian had caused lingered long after she left. Plus, they had all been reminded that by this time tomorrow, their number would be down by one.

At least they could now eat in peace. Or something that passed for peace, anyway.

Things were still _way_ awkward between Maura and Artemus, but it helped that with Gwenllian no longer being there to scare the shit out of him, Artemus seemed content to sit at the far end of the table and eat quietly as if none of the others were there. After a few minutes, the others paid about as much attention to him as they would the kitchen cabinets.

Gansey and Blue and Ronan spent dinner talking around things rather than about things. So much of their shared history was inextricably intertwined with Adam and Noah, and conversations kept drifting into morose silence before they could really get started. Plus, Gansey had dropped that little bomb about the 'last meal.' It had been for good cause, but the collateral damage was high. 

Also, now that the sun had set, Gansey was fading even faster. It was all too easy to see the shape of the bones beneath his face.

The almost-normal of that afternoon soon felt a million miles and a million years away.

Matthew, who could usually be counted on to keep things light, had gone unusually silent and thoughtful, even before Gwenllian dropped her load of crazy. There was no sign of the good mood he'd been in after he finally figured out the clutch. Ronan just hoped he hadn't noticed how Gwenllian had looked at him.

Matthew kept looking over where Mom used to sit, and each time he looked surprised and sad to see Artemus there. Maura was in Dad's spot, and that was wrong, too. Blue's wheelchair was pulled up to where Declan should have been sitting. Gansey and Ronan were at their usual places, but Ronan wondered if that being right just showed how horribly wrong everything else was.

_One minute, nothing's wrong. The next, everything sucks._

Even though it smelled fantastic and he'd actually felt like eating a few minutes earlier, Ronan did little more than pick at his dinner. Gwenllian's little outburst had killed his appetite. He took a bite whenever he caught Gansey giving him a worried look, but the longer he sat there, the more every bite felt like it got stuck halfway down his throat. 

All of a sudden he desperately wanted to not be here pretending to have a normal family dinner. He just wanted to go to bed even though it wasn't even seven o' clock. 

A few days ago, he had thought he would go out and do something stupidly reckless, something that would make him feel _alive_ , but Ronan now wondered if that was just force of habit, a twisted sort of muscle memory. He'd felt something similar just now, with Gwenllian. A lifetime ago, there would have been enough rage left that he would have gone out afterward and found a race or something else to try to burn it off. 

Instead, the anger had left as soon as she had, leaving nothing behind but nauseous and crushing fatigue all twisted up with worry about Matthew and Gansey.

After Dad's death, his anger had burned and burned and it felt like it would never go out until it had reduced everything around him to ash. Gansey had been the only one with any hope of taming it and keeping it from being too destructive, but it had been a close thing for a very long time. Kavinsky was proof enough of just how close it had been.

This time it was different. Gansey wouldn't be around, but it didn't matter because now Ronan was no longer burning - he was _burnt._ The only thing being reduced to ash was himself.

His plate was still more than half full when he didn't so much excuse himself as shove his plate away, sending the fork skittering across the table, and announce that fuck this, he was done, he was going to bed, good night.

As he left, Ronan briefly clasped Matthew's shoulder to remind him of the promise he had made that afternoon. This wasn't Ronan ditching him again. He hoped Matthew understood that.

Blue called out after him, but then Maura said something that Ronan couldn't quite hear. Probably something stupid about 'choosing your battles.'

He went upstairs to his own room, the room he hadn't slept in for over two years. In one way, it felt like nothing had changed. If he turned around and went back out that door, he would find that no time had passed at all. Mom was awake. Dad was alive. Declan was alive and not a complete jerk, and they could talk in music even if they kept fucking up when it came to words. Matthew was just a happy little boy who had been born like any other little boy. Gansey was his best friend, practically a third brother, and the quest for Glendower was just a grand and golden adventure where the important thing was the adventuring, not the finding.

At the same time, everything was different. It was different because Ronan was different. 

Two years were an eternity, when they were the two years Ronan had just lived through. 

He had no idea what his sixteen-year-old self would think of the shaved head and the elaborate tattoo and the multiple misdemeanors. He wondered what sixteen-year-old Ronan Lynch would think about so many secret things no longer being secret. His friends knew he could take things out of his dreams. He could make out with ( _make love to_ ) another boy ( _Adam_ ) and have it not be a dream followed by furtive cleanup and fervent denial.

Two weeks were an eternity, when you had lost as much as Ronan had. 

He felt so much older than barely eighteen. He lay back on his bed and closed his eyes. There were moments, like on the drive out here or when Matthew finally figured out the clutch, when it felt like everything was going to be okay. 

Then there were other moments, like on the walk to the cow barn or sitting there picking at his dinner after Gwenllian's outburst, when it felt like nothing would ever be okay again. One minute, he would be poking at Blue to see her snarl, the next moment he would want to crawl into a hole and never come out.

One minute, he was crashing through the forest, grinning and burning with the need to see Adam and tell him they had finally won. The next, he was kneeling by a body that was hours cold and wondering how the hell this could have happened because they had finally _won_.

It was so fucking exhausting. He wished he could just _forget_ and felt a surge of shame an instant behind the thought.

_Adam and Declan and Noah deserve more than you wanting to just forget them._

No. He didn't want to forget. He just wanted the memories not to feel like ribs cracking and his heart twisting into a knot. Maybe Calla's idea of 'mellow and melancholy' wasn't as stupid as it sounded. It was just impossible. Right now, 'comatose' sounded much more appealing and achievable.

Ronan closed his eyes and tried to let the fatigue take him. If he was lucky, he wouldn't dream. Or maybe he could dream up a magic pill the way Kavinsky had, only this one would let him sleep and sleep and sleep and never dream...

His phone rang. He jolted out of sleep, and for a moment he thought it was Declan calling him to lecture him about getting his act together. It took him longer than it should have to remember why that wasn't possible. He rolled over and let whatever it was go to voice mail. 

Instead of giving the voice mail chime, the phone rang again. He ignored it again. Anyone he might want to talk to was here at the Barns.

The third time it rang, Ronan finally rolled back over and grabbed the phone to check the number in case it was someone who might call Gansey next in an attempt to track him down. He was surprised to see who it was. He was also surprised to see that he had actually slept for nearly three hours. He answered just before the call was dumped into voice mail for the third time.

"Hello?" he said warily. These days, phones brought nothing but bad news.

"First of all, snake, nothing's wrong and no one's hurt," Calla said. "Also, I looked up what that scotch you gave me goes for, and _holy shit._ Also, thanks."

"Whatever," he grumped. "So what happened? You didn't call three times in a row just to say thanks."

She cackled. "True enough. Oh, and speaking of ridiculously expensive things, I wouldn't want to see the heating bill for that warehouse you two call an apartment."

Ronan sat up, no longer feeling quite so beaten down. There was nothing like quasi-illicit entry to brighten a shitty evening. "So you found the key?"

"No. It was dark and I didn't want to rummage through frozen leaves. It was faster to pick the locks."

Ronan grinned. Illicit was even better than quasi-illicit. "Do you give lessons?"

"No. And by the way, you and I need to have words about where you have the 'kitchen' set up. That is _not_ sanitary."

"If you're just calling to criticize the decor, I'm hanging up." He'd never admit it, but it was so damned good to talk to someone who wasn't deeply tangled up in all his recent shit.

"You won't. You're too curious about what I have to say. I took a look at your treasure hoard like I assume you wanted me to do." The caustic teasing shifted to something more terse and business-like.

"And? Were you right? Is it just my memory barfing up stuff without my knowing?"

"Not quite," she said, and Ronan recognized the tones of someone who was delaying getting to a subject that made them uncomfortable. "A lot of it seems to be yours, but..."

"But?"

"Well, some of it is crap from movies and books, things you read probably read about or watched often enough that it became 'real' in your mind at some level. Funny, but I wouldn't have taken you for the _Alice in Wonderland_ type."

"Ha fuckity ha. That's not what you were about to say, was it? What else did you find?"

Ronan heard a harsh inhale-exhale at the other end of the line. "There were a couple of things in there that didn't belong. They're memories, but I'm not sure they're _yours_."

"What?" He didn't know what the hell Calla was trying to get at.

There was a long pause he didn't know how to read. 

"There was a dark red glass basin, almost black, about a foot and a half wide with a broad rim. You know the one I'm talking about?"

Ronan thought for a moment. He knew exactly which one she meant. The bowl was the color of red wine made solid. The inside of the bowl was perfectly smooth, but the rim and the outside had a rough, knobbly texture that he liked the feel of. He had thought it would make a nice bird bath for Chainsaw.

"Maybe. I dunno," he said. "I brought lots of shit back."

There was another inhale-exhale on Calla's end of the line, then another long pause. 

"That was Persephone's favorite scrying bowl."

He blinked in surprise, but before he could get too freaked out, an obvious and reassuring answer slotted into place without much thought.

"So? I probably saw it when I was at your place and thought it was cool. Big deal."

"Ronan." Her use of his actual name got his attention fast and hard. "There's no way you could have seen it. That bowl shattered into a million pieces a decade ago."

"I... I don't understand." He felt an echo of that afternoon's panic, and the world started to tilt.

"Well, neither do I. And what's really freaking me the hell out right now is what happened when it did break. Oh, and in case you're wondering, Blue's the one who broke it."

Ronan let out a breath that was half-laugh, and the dizzyish feeling faded. So, maybe one of Blue's memories had slipped into Cabeswater and he'd somehow picked it up. He could deal with that, although Blue would murder him if she thought he had been rummaging around in her brain. 

"Figures. So what else happened besides the midget breaking one of Persephone's things?"

"What happened is that Persephone was the least upset of any of us. Poor Blue was wailing her little head off, she felt so bad. Persephone just swept up the pieces and said..." 

There was another pause, and when Calla spoke again, Ronan could hear the strain of her trying to keep her voice even. Ronan wondered if she was crying. He had a feeling she _hated_ other people knowing she was crying. 

"She said she would eventually get it back one day. She was always very good at seeing into the far future, but even she had her limits." 

Had them and didn't know them. Persephone had overestimated how far she could go. So had Adam. Now, both had gone so past those limits they were never coming back.

"So what do I do now?" he asked, and shit, he sounded like a little kid.

"Some of this will have to wait until I get up there in a couple of days, but you need to tell Maura and Artemus what's going on. Look," she continued, cutting off his protest, "right now Artemus is the best source of knowledge on this kind of shit you have, and if things start going haywire, he and Maura need to know what's going on so they can do something about it before anyone gets hurt."

She had a point, not that Ronan would admit it.

"At least I'm not telling you to talk to Gwenllian," she added cheerfully.

Ronan treated Calla to a long, profanity-laden rant about record players and folk songs and creepy-ass Welsh witches who were being a fucking waste of space.

Calla was howling by the time he was done. "Did Maura threaten to glue her mouth shut?" she asked gleefully.

"No, but she did ask where we kept the duct tape." He grinned to hear the bark of laughter on the other end of the line, but talking about Gwenllian got him thinking about Matthew.

"What is it, snake? I don't like the tone of that silence."

It was his turn to take a deep, grounding breath. "There's something else I brought out - no, that I _did_ in a dream recently."

"You made something and didn't bring it out?"

He shook his head, forgetting that she wouldn't be able to see it. "I didn't make it, and I brought it out fifteen years ago."

"Want to try saying that in English?"

Slowly, and with lots of going back and way too many questions from Calla, Ronan told her about Matthew.

"Shit," she said.

"You said it."

"Well, you definitely need to tell Maura about this. She knows more than anyone else I know about weird time shit. The only thing I can tell you is that I don't like that this is happening along with you bringing out other people's memories and the solstice coming up. Does your little brother know about this?"

"No. I didn't even know until a few months ago that Matthew was a dream." 

Calla's only response to that was a long and dubious _hmmmm..._

"Talk to Maura and tell her to call me when she has a chance. I think I may be coming out there again earlier than I originally planned. Oh, and FYI? I'm keeping the bowl. Deal with it."

Good. He was glad. It was _right_ that it go back to Fox Way. 

"Sure. Whatever."

She laughed more gently than he had heard from her before. "Good night, Ronan."

He hung up without saying anything else.

It wasn't quite ten-thirty, so chances were decent Gansey was still up unless his curse had really whammied him. Ronan suspected, though, that Gansey would do everything he could this last night _not_ to fall asleep.

He headed downstairs - Calla's call had jarred him back awake, and he wanted to find Gansey and tell him what he had just learned. If he told Gansey first, that might make telling Maura and Artemus suck less.

He walked into the family room. Gansey and Blue sat close together on the couch, holding each other in a way that at first looked compromising. Ronan grinned and thought about giving them some shit just for the fun of it, but then he saw how Gansey's forehead was resting on Blue's shoulder and how she had her lips pressed gently to the top of his head while she stroked his back and held him. Gansey's shoulders were shaking softly, and Blue's face was tight with misery.

Ronan turned right back around without a word and left before they saw or heard him. It would have been less embarrassing if he'd caught them fucking. This, he didn't know how to deal with.

As he walked away, he heard Gansey saying something to Blue. The words were muffled, but Ronan thought he heard Adam's name. And then, his name.

He went back upstairs, fists clenched so tight his nails dug into his palms. As he walked back to his room, he saw light shining from under Matthew's door. He slowed for a moment and touched the doorknob only to yank his hand away and keep walking. 

Matthew didn't need to deal with Ronan's shit. Not after what Ronan had learned today and what he wasn't in any way ready to tell Matthew. Ronan wasn't going to fuck things up with Matthew again. Not this time.

When he got back to his room, he pulled off his jeans before he fell asleep in them again and got back into bed. He could deal with Calla's news and Gansey's problems and be a better brother to Matthew tomorrow. Right now, he was just too damned _tired_. 

He wanted someone who could be there for him the way Blue was for Gansey. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and groaned in miserable frustration. God, right now he hated them _so much_ for having that while he had nothing. Less than nothing.

He wanted it to be two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, he had kissed Adam.

_About damn time, Lynch._

Two weeks ago, Adam had kissed him back. 

Two weeks ago, Declan was alive.

In a different world, there would have been no phone call from the police. There would have just been more kisses and laughter and groping and 'oh my God, what are we going to tell Gansey?'

Ronan stared up at the darkened ceiling and the moonlit shadows of bare trees spidering across the plaster. It reminded him of the sky in Cabeswater. 

He rolled over onto his side so he was facing the darkest part of the room where there were no shadows.

He wanted Adam to be here with him. He wanted to tell Adam everything and have Adam tell him how to fix it. He wanted Adam. He closed his eyes, and he remembered.

Lying like this, it was the easiest thing in the world to remember how Adam's warm, wiry form felt spooned up behind him. He remembered Adam's arm slung around him, hand splayed right over Ronan's heart. The memory was so vivid he thought he could feel it for real.

Ronan slid his hand up to his chest, clutching the fabric of his tee shirt, but he remembered sliding it up to place it over Adam's hand. He remembered feeling the fine bones under now-smooth skin and rubbing his thumb across the back of Adam's fingers and feeling Adam's hum of drowsy contentment against his back.

He remembered warm breath against the back of his neck even though there was nothing but a chill there now.

He remembered the quiet and the warmth at the same time he remembered the rush and the heat. He remembered Adam's rough gasps of pleasure as Ronan ground against him and he remembered the sleepy, quiet _g'night, Ronan_ as they drifted off in the afterglow. He remembered the gentleness of Adam's hand resting over his heart and the soft kiss on the back of his neck, and he remembered the sharp nips along his throat and collarbone, and fingers digging hard enough into his hips to leave bruises and scratches.

Funny, how memory wasn't as arousing as fantasy. Maybe it was because with memory, it wasn't about trying get off - it was about trying to hold on. 

Ronan knew that given what had led up to their first and only time together it would be easy to wonder if he had simply _used_ Adam as a way to forget his pain and guilt. Or if Adam had taken advantage of his grief and desperate need for comfort. But memory told him that was not true. It had been about need, and trust, and love, and there was nothing ambiguous about it at all. Ronan had fallen asleep with Adam's hand over his heart and his hand over Adam's.

He hoped he never forgot what that felt like. Now, all he could do was clutch his shirt over the tight hollowness of his chest and in the privacy of his room allow himself to give in to the angry sobs he had been fighting back all day. There were too many things he would never have a chance to remember, and it wasn't fucking _fair_.

Eventually, misery gave way to sleep, and sleep gave way to dream.

The dark of the room brightened and the warmth of the blankets vanished. Ronan found himself in a winter forest, lying in frozen mud right on the edge of another strange, blank pool. He tried to scramble to his feet and get away from the thing, but the ground was slick with ice and in a panic to gain his footing he stepped right into the water. 

It pulled him in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Ronan meets a familiar stranger (aka, the scene that started this whole plot bunny in the first place).


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan regrets taking off his jeans. Someone gets hit in the face. The Greywaren has a lot of work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just three (possibly four, if I do another split) more chapters to go after this! If all goes well, I'll have this done before TRK comes out.
> 
> Anyhow, the central event in this chapter is what actually got this whole plot bunny started. While it was fun to write, it was also a lot harder to pull off than I had expected, so many, many thanks to [Aishuu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Aishuu/pseuds/Aishuu) for pushing me to make some very necessary changes. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has been reading along. Comments, questions and criticism are always welcome.
> 
> Warnings for violence in this chapter along with some (non-sexual) consent issues. See the end for more info.

Ronan jerked awake with the sudden fall, but he did not wake in his own bed, tangled up in his memories of Adam.

He woke sitting bolt upright on a sun-dappled forest floor near the top of a hill, his sudden stop cushioned by a thick blanket of fallen pine needles. As far as he could tell, he was alone.

The suddenness of the fall and the sense of waking into a different dream was much like the one the other night (or was it fifteen years ago?) when he had found Matthew. 

That time, he had woken up in the damp, misty chill of an early spring morning. 

This time, he woke in the warm amber light of late afternoon. A faint and dozy buzz of cicadas rose and ebbed all around him. The sun was warm where it slanted through the trees, but the breeze promised a cool evening and a cold night. Early fall, maybe?

Except...

The world flickered to twilight for less than a second. Twilight and cold and bare trees. Winter.

It flicked back just as suddenly to warm and sunny. The cicadas sang as if they hadn't been interrupted. The forest felt oppressively _awake_ and _aware_. 

Another flicker. Autumn to winter to autumn again. It flickered the way the lost baby who became Matthew had flickered in and out of existence.

Ronan stood up slowly and cautiously, even though anything here that could notice him probably already _had_ noticed him. He brushed sap-sticky pine needles off his palms and the seat of his boxers, and he waited. The last time Ronan had fallen into one of those strange, blank pools, he felt he had woken into a _good_ dream. This dream felt like it was on the edge. 

Something was about to happen, but it was anyone's guess if it would be good or bad.

As if to emphasize the point, the forest flickered again several times, and the bursts of winter were intense enough that Ronan _really_ wished he was wearing more than just boxers and and a long-sleeved tee.

After another minute of maddening silence and another three flickers to dark-and-cold, Ronan translated what he needed to ask into Latin. 

"Why did you bring me here?" Was he supposed to stop the flickering the way he had done with Matthew? How was he supposed to do that for an entire forest?

The trees responded in a swirl of wind that set branches rattling overhead and sent dozens of birds into startled flight. In the burst of noise, Ronan heard a long, complicated sentence in the trees' own language. The only word Ronan could recognize was 'Greywaren,' and the sentence rose at the end as if the trees were asking their own question instead of answering Ronan's.

"I do not understand," he said in Latin. And again: "Why did you bring me here?"

The rattling stopped. It stayed solidly autumn, but the birds glided back to their perches in unsettling silence, and the cicadas stopped singing. Ronan knew he was being watched. Evaluated. He held out his arms and turned in a slow circle, grinning as if to say _go on, check out the goods_. The sense of being watched grew so much it was as if gravity had suddenly increased fivefold. Ronan fought to stay standing. 

_"We forgot."_

_Obliti_. The word was far too small and flimsy to bear whatever idea it was trying to convey and it nearly tore apart at the seams. Ronan swayed under the word's weight, but outrage kept him upright. 

Something brought him here and it couldn't even remember why? 

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

_"We must remember. You must remember."_

He wasn't sure if it was a response, or if it was just what it was going to say next.

"You said that before," he replied in Latin. "What does that mean?"

There was a sigh of wind, and then the pressure of the trees' attention lifted so abruptly it sent Ronan stumbling. The forest spoke again but its words were further off and further down in the forest. Ronan could tell the voices were not directed towards him. 

So who the fuck were they talking to?

After a moment's hesitation, Ronan headed downhill towards the source of the forest's whispers, stopping only when it shifted to winter. At each shift, winter twilight grew closer to night, and the footing was treacherous as it was. During one shift, he thought he felt ice underfoot.

Man, he wished he was wearing socks.

The only reason he kept going instead of trying to wake up or stopping to dream up some warmer clothes was that the last time he had been pulled from one dream into another one, he had found Matthew. He had found Adam, even though he had lost him again. 

This time, maybe he would find some fucking _answers_.

The trees whispered another question off in the distance, and this time there was an answer. It was swift, annoyed, and unmistakably human.

The words were in the trees' language, but this strange man - it was definitely a man's voice - spoke them with careless fluency. 

Ronan bared his teeth, not liking the idea of someone being able to speak that language without the puzzle box's help. He hated the idea of anyone who wasn't him or his friends even knowing that the language _existed_. For someone else to speak it so easily felt like a betrayal. _He_ was the Greywaren, and the forest should be speaking to _him_.

He tried to make the forest stay in autumn, where he could see where he was going and not freeze his ass (and his bare feet) off, but the harder he tried, the more time flickered between afternoon and night. There was even a burst of oppressive heat and blinding daylight in there. So he stopped.

Ronan moved closer, picking his way down the steep and uneven slope as quietly as he could and staying behind cover as much as possible until he could get an idea of what was going on. Ronan had learned the hard way that he wasn't exactly unique in his abilities. The last thing he needed right now was to run into another Kavinsky.

There was another exchange, terse and anxious, and something about the man's voice prickled at Ronan's memory even though the cadence of the language made the voice impossible to place. 

The voices led him downhill towards a twisting and rocky creek bed. A man stood on a large, flat rock in the middle of the dry creek bed, back to Ronan. Even from a distance, Ronan could tell the man was every bit as tall as himself, though broader through the shoulder. Thick, dark hair lay smooth across his head, but that was only because it was pulled back tight into a ponytail, where it escaped into an untidy spill of waves and tangles that hung halfway down the man's back.

What stopped Ronan cold was that he _knew_ the fucking coat the man was wearing. He had seen it just a month ago, the last time he and Adam had gone to the Barns. The old green canvas coat had been hanging on a hook by the door of the cow shed, right where his father had left it two years ago.

The trees whispered, catching the man's attention. He turned just enough that Ronan could see his face. The man was too far way for Ronan to make out details, but he knew exactly who the man was.

"Dad?!"

Ronan grabbed a sapling to keep from falling. The world went dark and blisteringly cold, but Ronan hardly noticed.

"You're alive?"

Ronan hadn't dared hope, but he couldn't stop himself from hoping, especially not since he brought his own dying self back from a dream. Ever since then, a part of him had wondered...

"You've been alive this _whole fucking time?"_

Ronan had found him in the driveway with his head bashed in. And he had just let Ronan live with that image burned into his brain for two fucking years?

"Where have you been? Why the fuck didn't you tell me you were alive?!"

What the hell had Ronan done to deserve this? What had he done to make Dad just leave him like this and not say jack shit for two years?

_tck_

Hope and rage and self-loathing tangled up inside him until Ronan didn't know what he really felt. More than anything, though, he wanted some fucking answers.

Winter night changed back to autumn sunset and Ronan half ran, half slid the rest of the way down the hill, barely noticing the sticks and rocks that cut at his bare feet.

_tck-tck_

Dad was alive. Dad was alive. Dad was alive... Joy crashed against rage crashed against grief.

"Did you know about Declan? Did you? Where the fuck where you? Do you have any idea about the massive piles of shit I've been though? _Do you?_ " 

He was laughing. He was sobbing. He was shouting. 

_tck-tck-tck_

" _Do you?_ Why the fuck didn't you _help?_ What were - _No!_ Don't you fucking _dare_ turn your back on me, you asshole!"

Because of course, Dad had turned back to whatever it was further along that creek bed that was so much more fucking fascinating than the son who had thought he was dead for two of the shittiest years in the history of the world. He - 

_tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck-tck_

Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect... Of course _they_ would show up, summoned by the storm raging in his mind.

Three giant night terrors swooped straight towards them. Ronan ran towards his father, maybe to protect, maybe to be protected, maybe both.

Before he could get there, his father lifted a hand towards the night terrors. His wedding ring glinted in the afternoon sun. He plucked the glint of golden light from mid-air and flicked his hand towards the terrors as if shooing away a persistent gnat. The light changed as it flew from his hand, but Ronan couldn't see what it became, only the way it twisted reality around it. When it hit the night terrors, they stopped in mid-air and went flat and indistinct like pictures in an old newspaper. Fire bloomed from their centers out, devouring them. It was fast, thorough, and strangely silent. Their ashes fell from the sky like dark snow.

The night horrors were gone. Erased with a flick of the wrist, a glint of light, and a handful of dreams. Just like that.

Ronan ran the rest of the way to the rock and clambered up.

"What the hell is going on? How the fuck did you do that?"

At this point, Ronan knew, his father would turn around and give him the standard line of Niall Lynch charm and Ronan would fall for every god-damned bit of it, because how could he not?

"What's going on is that we _do not_ have time for this shit," the man snarled, and now that he spoke in English, Ronan knew it wasn't Dad.

Of course it wasn't. He should have known. If Dad was alive, then why would Mom be stuck in Cabeswater? The burst of hope he had felt turned to bitter disappointment and renewed grief, but his fury at being deceived now _burned_.

Shouting in rage, Ronan took a swing at not-Dad only for him to step aside and grab Ronan's wrist to pull him into a sharp jab to the solar plexus. The force of the punch plus Ronan's own momentum landed Ronan on his hands and knees, retching up bile and trying to remember how to breathe.

"Are you done? Can we please not do this?" the man said, clearly exasperated.

Humiliated and in pain and _finally_ having something he could fight, Ronan roared to his feet and took another swing.

This time, he got a punch right beside his left eye that had him seeing flashes of light. He didn't go down, but he staggered, and the man grabbed his chin before Ronan could flinch away.

"I know you're going through a fuckton of shit right now, but we do _not have time_ for you to have a fucking temper tantrum!"

Ronan tried to twist free, but the other man held him firm. Now that he finally got a good look at the man's face, Ronan saw he looked a hell of a lot like Dad, enough that Ronan didn't feel like an idiot for thinking he _was_ Dad. The features were subtly sharper than Dad's, though, more knife-like, and... _oh._

Everyone had always told Ronan he looked a lot like his father, but he'd never really seen it before.

" _Now_ do you fucking get it?" his older self snapped.

"Yeah." Ronan glared at his older self and swatted his hand - his own hand - away from his chin. He tried to hide the way he was trembling. "I get it." 

"Great. So now that you get it, do you think you can pull your shit together long enough to listen and maybe do what you're told for once?"

Ronan's eyes narrowed. He hated that he sounded so much like Declan. How much older was his other self? Twenty years, maybe? The jawline was stronger and indefinably more adult and there were crow's feet around his eyes. Ronan saw a few glints of silver in his hair, but he still looked younger than Dad.

"Only if you tell me what the hell is going on," Ronan said. The side of his face was starting to throb now that the initial shock had worn off. If he didn't get some helpful, non-cryptic answers, he was going to strangle his other self with that douchebag ponytail.

Before the other Ronan could say anything, they were hit by a rapid-fire set of changes to winter and back, intercut with blinding light and total darkness. When it stopped, Ronan's teeth were chattering, which just made his face hurt that much more. His older self was clenching his jaw and clutching at his left bicep. His skin looked like it had gone clammy.

" _That's_ what the hell is going on, and we need to stop it _now_ ," he panted. "Fuck, that hurt! Short version - the ley line can get fucked up in time as well as space, and that stupid stunt Adam pulled back in your time knocked all kinds of shit off its moorings."

"Fuck you!" Ronan shouted. He would never, _never_ dismiss what Adam had done like that, even if he would never forgive Adam for sacrificing himself again. Didn't he care any more that Adam had fucking died pulling that 'stupid stunt?' He remembered the ring that he thought was Dad's, and his stomach churned. "What the fuck is wrong - "

His older self struck like a snake. He grabbed Ronan's wrist and twisted his arm up and back before Ronan knew what happened, forcing him to turn and drop hard to his knees. Ronan howled in pain and outrage. He tried to thrash free, but his older self had a good twenty pounds of muscle and twenty years of mean on him. The hand that wasn't trying to break Ronan's wrist clamped onto his shoulder. 

Seasons ripped past them too fast to track. Trees grew, shrank, vanished, burned. 

"You'll thank yourself for this later," his other self hissed. He let go of Ronan's arm, but the fingers of his left hand stayed dug deep into Ronan's shoulder, holding him tight. 

"We don't have _time_. You need to help anchor the ley line before it's too late. That's why we brought you here. Remember when you came from and, if you can, remember this..."

Cold. Heat. Air that smelled of sulfur and scalded his lungs. Winter. Air that burned like acid. Spring. Summer. Winter, and the drive out to the Barns. The sun, sickly red and bloated. Winter again.

"Remember to _hold on._ "

The forest grew impossibly dense. The air was hot and humid enough to strangle him. Winter, and Matthew's smile as he started the car. Then he was drowning in salt water and being crushed by unimaginable pressure. Then they could breathe again. Winter.

Winter, and he ran into the clearing in Cabeswater and saw Adam, and he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe...

_"Hold on."_

The ley line bucked them through time, backwards and forwards and too many years to count. This was Adam's job, not his. Adam should be here, Adam should be the one who fixed the ley line, he was the magician, he...

They were thrown into a time when the world was red and molten and the sky burned. Fingers dug tighter into his shoulder.

"I fucking said _hold on!_ Remember that! You need to remember!"

They were in a forest again, then a swamp, then back to winter again a second later. Over and over, they returned to winter, to December, the December at the end of Ronan's eighteenth year. 

December, and he was kissing Adam.

 _About damn time, Lynch_.

December, and the lady at the police station was leading him back to the morgue.

_"Hold on."_

Ronan could only kneel there on the rock, battered back and forth by the shifting years. But he held on.

He remembered the cold as he went out without his coat yesterday (today? a million years ago?) and he remembered the snow-dusted fields and the old familiar music on the drive out to the Barns. He remembered Gansey's scream of anguish when he thought Blue had been killed and how it felt like time had just stopped. He remembered the chill in the car as Matthew tried over and over to start it. He remembered the warmth of Gansey's arms around him as he broke down over that stupid mix tape.

The more he remembered, the more his own time became _real_. He didn't know what his older self was doing, but the swings in time were becoming less violent, less frequent. They were only moving between seasons, not years or eons. The other times were becoming dreams, ordinary dreams, the kind that simply faded away upon waking.

_"Hold on."_

His other self kept that iron grip on his shoulder, fingers digging painfully under his collarbone. Ronan began to saw other people in the winter forest. Shadows. Ghosts. They flitted by slowly enough to seem familiar but too fast to recognize. But he thought he saw Orphan Girl. He thought he saw Adam.

 _"Hold on._ Remember. You have to remember." his older self hissed. "We almost have it, we almost have it..."

Winter steadied, but then it flung them into summer, and Ronan saw four (or was it five?) too-familiar people innocently picking their way through the woods. Ronan gasped in dismay and want. Adam paused, head tilted in curiosity. He brushed his fingers over his deaf ear and turned towards them, but he vanished along with the others into winter before he saw Ronan or before Ronan could say anything. 

"Hold on, hold on, remember what's real..." This time, it sounded like his older self was talking to himself as well as to Ronan. He sounded wrung out. "Remember what's _real_."

He released his grip on Ronan's shoulder as winter finally settled around them for good. It felt real, even though part of Ronan knew he was still dreaming. 

"You still have a lot of work to do, Greywaren," his other self said, words slurred with fatigue. "You have no idea how lucky we were with Matthew. That was a rare gift. The rest of it won't be half as easy. Sorry about that."

He didn't sound the least bit sorry.

Ronan got shakily to his feet and turned to ask what the hell all that was supposed to mean, but he was alone on the rock.

"What the fuck just happened?" he demanded, but there was no answer. 

Also, he was freezing. The autumn from the future Ronan's time had vanished along with him. Ronan's face throbbed insistently where he'd punched himself, and it was starting to sink in just how badly he'd cut up his feet when he'd clambered down the hill. He closed his eyes, and took a few moments to wallow in just how much everything hurt. He heard the trees whispering his name, over and over again, but nothing they said made any sense.

 _Wake up_ , he told himself. He was done. Beyond done.

"Why won't you take me with you?"

He opened his eyes. Orphan Girl was standing there, looking up at him from the creek bed, tears streaming down her face. She reached up to him. The trees whispered even louder, but he didn't know what they wanted.

"Please!" she begged.

He reached down to take her hand, only to find he was reaching towards his closet door. He was back in bed, still chilled to the bone and feeling like he'd been run though a thresher, but grateful for blankets that still held his own body heat and the warm weight of the other person lying beside him. He closed his eyes again, wondering if he could actually just sleep for a little while.

 _Wait._

His eyes shot open. 

_Other person?_

He looked to his left.

Gwenllian's face was mere inches from his own. She grinned lopsidedly and her eyes shone with crazy. Her lips and teeth were bedecked with crumbs and bright sprinkles.

"Ah! He awakes, the little dreamer who disdains his teachers so-oh-oh. Did you have good dreams, little dreamer? What did you dream of, oh, what lost wonders did you find?"

Ronan would deny it later, but he screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: They start preparing for Gansey's winter sleep, and it turns out they had some of the details of his curse wrong.
> 
> Notes: The idea of Ronan meeting his older self through Cabeswater time shenanigans was what got me started. Anyhow, some of the issues regarding Older!Ronan forcing his younger self to help with the ley line will be addressed next chapter. Nearly breaking your younger self's arm to force him into compliance is very much not cool, and that will be acknowledged.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gwenllian eats someone else's breakfast. Ronan makes a promise he may not be able to keep. One of Gansey's polo shirts is ruined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I upped the final chapter count, as I realized that a major scene in this chapter needed to be longer. That means chances are slim that I'll get the whole thing posted by the time _The Raven King_ is out, but I'd rather tell this story right than tell it fast.
> 
> As always, comments (including constructive criticism) are very welcome!

Ronan scrambled away from Gwenllian so fast he nearly went straight up the headboard.

"What the fuck are you doing here!" His voice shot up about two octaves.

Gwenllian sat up, laughing high and wild as she clapped enthusiastically. Unfortunately, she was still holding the remains of a Pop Tart in her lower hand, so her applause sent crumbs and globs of blueberry goop flying all over Ronan's blankets and rug. Two empty wrappers and an open box sat next to her on the bed.

"Matthew is going to kill you for eating those, and I will _help_ him!"

"Then he should have laid claim to these rare delights when he had the chance," she informed him with a haughty sniff. "If the twice-born child does not care to break his fast this morning, then that is none of _my_ concern. Though perhaps it should be yours? But then, there are many, so many-many-many things that concern you, little dreamer. Shall I name them all?"

"Don't do me any favors. And wait - what did you just call Matthew?" 

Gwenllian pulled another foil packet out of the box and tore it open with her teeth. She shoved half a Pop Tart in her mouth at once and started singing and chewing at the same time.

_"Quickly run to the white steed and pull the rider down  
For I'll ride on the white steed, the nearest to the town  
For I was an earthly knight, they give me that renown  
Oh, they will turn me in your arms to a newt or a snake  
But hold me tight and - "_

Ronan sliced his arms through the air. "Enough with that fucking song, okay! I asked you a question!"

She pouted. "But I haven't yet reached my favorite part." She leaned in close and held a hand to the side of her still-full mouth as she stage-whispered: "Next, he turns into a _lion!_ "

Ronan brushed damp crumbs from his face. "I know! I fucking know! You played that stupid song fifty million times! Stupid Janet holds on to him, and Tam Lin coughs up the child support payments or whatever and everyone lives dysfunctionally ever after. I get it!"

Gwenllian finished chewing her mouthful of Pop Tart and took another bite, this one more reasonably sized. As she ate the pastry (and while Ronan desperately scanned the floor for his jeans) she studied him thoughtfully. For once, she looked halfway close to sane, and somehow this made her even more disconcerting.

"The child is irrelevant," she said between bites. "Besides, you already _are_ a parent - after a strange and unnatural fashion. I approve. Ahh... do you remember how I made one of your children sing for you, little dreamer?"

Ronan clenched his jaw so tight he thought his teeth would crack. The entire left side of his face throbbed. The thought of her pulling her witchy games on Matthew, of her voice spilling out of Matthew's mouth...

"Get. Out."

She smiled at him, her eyes glittering with unaccustomed sanity, daring him to _make_ her leave.

A polite throat-clearing pulled their attention to the door. Gansey stood in the door to Ronan's room - actually, it was less that he stood and more that he leaned against the door frame to keep from keeling over. His hair had been roughly finger-combed into an approximation of its usual style and he wore a lime green long-sleeved polo that deserved to be burned. It looked even more hideous than Gansey's shirts usually did. Perhaps it was because there should have been a vitality to Gansey that matched the brightness of those ridiculous shirts, but there was no sign of it now. Gansey looked _used up_ , no matter how much he was trying to hide it.

By sunset, he would be sleeping. Or dead. Or some weird combination of the two.

"Gwenllian, Ronan is our host. It's not proper to enter his room without permission. He - " Gansey blinked at the scene in front of him, pushing his glasses back up so he could see properly. "We have Pop Tarts?"

"No. _We_ do not." Gwenllian slipped the last packet into the sleeve of her baggy cardigan, leaving the now-empty box on Ronan's bed. Then she swung her legs off the bed and rose to her feet in a smooth motion that emphasized her not-inconsiderable height. "I am finished here, _your majesty_ , so I will leave you to your chief courtier. I am done trying to share my hard-won and long-sought wisdom with the those without the patience to listen. I did not stay awake and keep watch through so many years over-and-over, oh, over-and-over, from the birthing of the moon to the dying of the sun and back again, to be treated thus."

With that, she curtsied and swept from the room, humming a melody that Ronan would _pay_ to never hear again.

"I am never going to get that song out of my head. It is going to be stuck in there until I die, and when I do, I am taking her with me!" Ronan snarled, raising his middle finger in the general direction of Gwenllian's departure.

Gansey laughed and smiled in a way that made him look like _Gansey_ again. "I would say that this is the perfect karmic retribution for the Murder Squash song, but Blue and I did nothing to deserve being punished along with you."

"Hey! First of all, Murder Squash is awesome. Second of all, fuck you." 

Then, it clicked that Gansey was _upstairs_. As in, he had climbed up the stairs to get to Ronan's room, and he now looked like he was five seconds away from toppling over. 

"Third of all, sit down before I have to scrape your sorry ass off the floor. What were you thinking, coming up here? You're supposed to be resting."

"The wound hasn't shown any signs of opening yet. If Artemus is right, I should be fine until after noon. Anyhow, I was a little worried about you after last night, and I wanted to see how you were doing." 

Gansey had his best 'reassuring' voice on, but Ronan heard the unspoken 'before I die' tacked on to the end of that sentence. Also, the reassurance didn't mesh well with what Ronan had seen last night.

"So how _are_ you doing?" he asked as if he wasn't doing just a shitty a job of coping as Ronan was.

"Absolutely fucking ducky. Thanks for asking. Now, sit the hell down, okay?" 

Ronan gave the blankets a little flip, shaking off the worst of the crumbs and fruit goo when he saw Gansey eying the mess warily. Chainsaw would eat the crumbs later, and where the hell was she, anyway? He checked his phone - how the hell was it already after ten o'clock? No wonder Gansey had come looking for him.

As Ronan settled the blankets and crossed his legs so Gansey had room to lie down if he wanted, something in the bed bumped his leg. It was a small white jar with a hand-written label. Ronan recognized it immediately even though the jar now had smudges of oily dirt around the edges of the lid and Ronan's handwriting had been smeared to illegibility. 

He opened it. The jar was almost empty. The remaining lotion smelled earthier and greener than he had remembered dreaming it. It smelled like Adam.

When he had first dreamed it, Ronan had left the jar in Adam's car rather than straight up giving it to him. He hadn't known how Adam would take it and was too scared to find out. 

Maybe that was why he had also all but picked a fight with Adam that night. That's what he did, when he didn't know what else to do. Or when he was afraid.

Afterward, when days went by and Adam hadn't said anything about the lotion, Ronan was about to write the whole thing off as a mistake to be forgotten as soon as possible. Then he had noticed that Adam's hands were healing up. That was when he had felt that first pang of real hope. He had finally allowed himself to wonder if maybe, just maybe...

Now, Ronan curled his hands around the jar and wondered what would have happened if he hadn't been so afraid of Adam shoving his feelings back in his face. He took all kinds of crazy chances, things that could have gotten him killed dozens of times over, so why had he balked at this one?

_About damn time, Lynch._

How long had Adam been waiting for him to say something?

"What is that?" Gansey asked. Ronan felt the bed shift as Gansey sat down. "Did you take it out of a dream?"

"I - "

Now that the rush of adrenaline from a _very_ rude awakening was gone, it was difficult to focus on any one thing. Too much had happened since dinner last night. Too much had happened, _period_.

"Yeah. No. I don't know," Ronan finished weakly. He fell back against the headboard and stared at the ceiling. The jar of cream remained cupped in his hands. The fact that it was nearly empty felt like a message. "Gansey, I have no idea what the fuck is going on any more, and I just beat the shit out of myself in the weirdest fucking dream _ever_."

"I couldn't help noticing the swelling around your eye," Gansey said, pointing at his own eye and wincing in sympathy. "You're going to have a spectacular black eye in a couple of days. And... did you say you did that to yourself? How is that even possible?"

"I have no fucking clue." Ronan put the jar on his nightstand and carefully eased himself out of bed. If he was going to be having this conversation, he was damn well going to have it with pants on. He let out a torrent of profanity as he accidentally put all his weight down on one of the worst of the cuts on his feet. He cut off Gansey's exclamations of concern with a death glare.

"I'm _fine_ , okay? Anyhow, to make a way too long story short, it was kind of like what happened with Matthew, only the other way around and a hell of a lot weirder."

As he got dressed, Ronan told Gansey the basics about falling into another blank pool of water and finding another version of himself, only this time it was an older one instead of a younger one. 

"Wait, wait... Are you trying to tell me that you encountered an older version of yourself in a dream, and the first thing you did was lose your temper and try to _punch_ him?"

"He deserved it," Ronan gritted out. The more he had time to process what had happened last night, the more he wished he'd landed a good hard punch on his other self. "He was an asshole. Hold on - are you laughing? You'd better not be fucking laughing."

"No. Not at all." Gansey's well-polished sincerity would have been more convincing if his voice hadn't been shaking with suppressed mirth. "It's reassuring to know, though, that you'll still be around and okay in... how many years is it?"

Ronan shrugged and sat back down on the bed, legs dangling over the edge. "Fifteen? Twenty? Fuck if I know. I didn't exactly have time to ask. It was all no-time-to-explain this and do-as-you're-told that, so I didn't get any juicy spoilers. Sorry about that."

There was the wedding ring on his other self's hand, though. And the way he had talked about Adam's sacrifice like it was just a stupid mistake.

Was the way he felt now, the way he missed Adam so desperately he just wanted to howl and beat his fists against the floor, or how he just wanted to sleep and sleep and sleep and never dream... was it all just meaningless in the end? 

No. He refused to believe it. Adam wasn't something you replaced like a burnt-out light bulb.

But then he thought about the jar of lotion he had just brought back, and how it was used up and smeared with engine grease, and how that felt like a warning.

Gansey's face grew more serious as if he was picking up on Ronan's darkening mood. "What happened, Ronan?"

Ronan shoved all thoughts of Adam and some unimaginable future marriage aside. There were plenty of other things that bothered him more and more now that he finally had time to think about them. Most of them boiled down to one thing:

"Here's what I don't get, Gansey. What the hell is going to happen to me between now and then that I'll think it's okay to try to rip my arm out of its socket to get me to do something?" Ronan rolled his abused shoulder and yes, there was a sharp twinge. Great. "I mean, I would have said 'yes' if he just fucking told me what was going on."

 _Consent is overrated_. Kavinsky's voice echoed through Ronan's head and he wanted to throw up.

No. He wasn't like that. He would _never_ be like that. There had to be some other explanation. There had to be.

Gansey thought it over for a moment. He started to ask something a couple of times, but stopped himself. Eventually, he came out with, "What was it older you wanted you to do? Did it seem important enough to warrant violence?"

"Yeah. It did." Ronan told Gansey what little he understood about what happened to the ley line and time and all the rest of that shit. How the ley line had come unstuck from time, and how everything had flickered. Gansey listened, rapt, as Ronan described how he'd seen everything from the molten Earth to the last days of the sun.

"I wish I'd been able to see it," Gansey said wistfully. "All that time, all those changes... But it also sounds frightening."

Ronan grunted. Being crushed and/or drowned by a primordial ocean hadn't exactly been happy fun times. Neither had the time when the atmosphere smelled like it was made of farts. "Yeah. I also think whatever it took to actually anchor the line damn near killed him. Me. Whatever."

This time stuff was never not going to hurt his head. The fist to his eye wasn't exactly helping with the headache, either.

"How powerful _are_ you?" Gansey wondered, enchanted. "All those things you learn to do, and will do? It's amazing."

"Whatever. Apparently I can also speak the trees' language fluently, but somehow can't figure out how to say 'hey, the world is about to end, so can you do me a solid?'" 

Gansey winced, but said nothing, choosing instead to think things over. Ronan got the feeling that maybe he was checking everything he said before putting his foot in his mouth. All at once, the sense that this was one of the last conversations they would have for a while, if not forever, became unbearable.

"Ronan? If Matthew was in danger, would you be willing to cause me harm, if that's what it took to keep him safe? Or hurt me, if there was no time to think of another way and you didn't think I would listen?"

_Are you done? Can we please not do this?_

Gansey did not point out that Ronan had admitted to throwing the first punch. He didn't need to.

"And even if you were mad at yourself for doing it, wouldn't you do it all over again if it meant saving Matthew? Or Blue?"

 _You'll thank yourself for this later_.

What would he have done to his younger self - his _three-year-old_ self - if it was the only way he could be sure Matthew would be brought safely out of their dream? How much of a monster would he have been?

Ronan wasn't sure he liked the answer to that question. 

He knew what he'd been willing to do in order to stop Colin Greenmantle. He had been willing to leave his own double to be torn apart by night terrors. He had willingly imagined things that had left a permanent stain on his soul.

No, he didn't like the answer to that question at all.

"Now, I'm not saying that you deserved getting beaten up," Gansey said after another long silence but Ronan wondered if he might have been thinking it. "Maybe what I'm trying to say is that it's understandable - not justified or right or reasonable, just understandable - that your older self would have been willing to hurt you and use you. Ronan, you would do _anything_ to protect the people you love. I've seen it."

The rage was there in an instant. "What? You mean like the fabulous job I did protecting Adam and Declan?" Ronan spat out. "Because from where I'm sitting, I did jack shit."

Ronan watched as Gansey fought back whatever he was tempted to say next. Gansey didn't want to fight. To be honest, neither did Ronan. 

What Ronan wanted was for Gansey to make everything _okay_ again, but that wasn't going to happen.

"If you had known they needed protecting, you would have done everything in your power to do so, and then some. I don't doubt that for a moment," Gansey said at last. "Which leads me to why I came up here to talk to you in private." 

There was something to Gansey's voice that put Ronan on alert.

Gansey shifted so that he was looking Ronan straight in the eye. He sat up as straight as he could, and when he spoke, it was in the voice that Ronan could never _not_ listen to.

"Artemus is going to ask you to dream up a few ingredients that he says he's lacking."

That wasn't anything close to what Ronan was expecting. And it was a big deal because why, exactly?

"Yeah, fine. Besides, I have to talk to him anyway."

Gansey did not look happy about that. "Ronan, it's obvious that he and Maura are working on a way to alter the contract," he said, resting a hand over the spot where the death wound was scheduled to appear.

"Yeah, I know. For the record, I'm all for it, and so is Blue, so tell him to go ahead and give me a shopping list." If they could salvage one thing out of this mess, Ronan would - just as Gansey had said - do just about anything to do it.

Gansey closed his eyes in an 'I'm trying to be patient' sort of way. "Ronan, I don't want you or Blue or anyone to - "

"Sorry, but you don't get a vote in this, Dick."

"I do _not_ want to wake up and find out that I've lost someone else I love!" Gansey shouted.

They sat there in silence, staring at each other in mutual shock over Gansey's outburst. Then Gansey slumped where he was sitting, his face softening to a sad smile.

"Please," Gansey asked gently. He reached over and lay a hand on Ronan's arm. He smiled, but it was the kind of smile you made when you wanted to cry. "Don't do that to me. I'm living at the cost of too many other peoples' lives already. I can't do that again. I couldn't live with myself if anything else happened to you. Or Blue. Or anyone else. It's already too much. There can't be any more. There _can't_."

Ronan leaned back. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He remembered what Blue had said about Gansey's state of mind when he went into his death/sleep/whatever. He knew that whatever he said next, he had no room to fuck it up.

"Look. I won't promise we won't try to figure out a way to un-dead you faster." He held up a hand when Gansey started to object. "I _will_ promise that I won't do anything stupid, though. Okay? Not about that, and not about anything else, either."

Gansey looked dubious, but Ronan supposed he had reason to. "Ronan, you've been amazing these past few days. You've held it together more than I would have expected, given - "

"What? Given the way I went off the rails after Dad died?" Ronan felt his temper flare again, but he bit it back. He had to. He had no choice. "No. That is _not_ going to happen, okay? Not this time. It's not. I won't let it."

"Ronan..." 

"It's. Not. Going. To. Happen." He began counting items off on his fingers. "One, I know now that if I do something really stupid, Matthew's the one who pays the price. Remember? Weren't we just talking about how far I'd go to keep him safe?" 

Besides, Ronan had promised not to flake out on Matthew like he had done last time. He was all Matthew had left, and Ronan was not going to let him down again. He was going to get Mom out of Cabeswater and untie Matthew's life from his own. They'd never be a complete family again, but they'd be a family. And maybe some day, they'd be something like okay again.

"Two, we still have no fucking clue how we're going to keep your parents from calling the police when they don't hear from you, and I'm your best chance to create something that will convince them that you're okay and it's not at all weird that they haven't heard from you in a month." 

God, he wished Adam was there. Adam would have figured out this shit the way he figured out Greenmantle, but now Ronan had to figure out how to explain Adam's absence along with Gansey's. He had no clue where to even start.

"Three, someone has to make sure your sorry ass is safe while you're out stuck out here."

Up until then, Gansey had been nodding along, relaxing more and more with each explanation. Now he was practically stammering in outrage.

"What? You're not planning on staying out here the entire time, are you? What about - "

"If you say 'what about school,' you will wake up with so much Sharpie on your face you'll spend the next year trying to get it off. But if it makes you feel better I'll dream up a doctor's note telling them I had mono or Ebola or something."

Gansey shook his head and laughed softly. "Ronan, I honestly couldn't ask for a better - "

Whatever Gansey was about to say was cut off by a dull wet _thump_ and sudden exhale of breath.

Gansey clutched at his side. His face had gone tight and pale, and he was trembling.

"Gansey! What the fuck?"

Gansey pulled his hand away from his side and stared down at it. His palm was smeared with red. A dark spot right under his ribcage bloomed and rapidly spread across his ridiculous green shirt in the exact same spot where the cursed arrow had sunk into Glendower's side.

"Shit!" Ronan hopped off the bed, biting back another shout as his feet hit the floor. He helped Gansey off the bed, getting Gansey's arm over his shoulder and wrapping an arm around Gansey's side, doing what he could to keep pressure on the wound.

"We gotta get you downstairs."

"I won't argue with that," Gansey gasped. He leaned hard against Ronan, uncomfortably close to being dead weight. "Ronan, this really hurts."

Shit. He sounded like a scared little kid.

"Don't punk out on me, okay, Gansey?" Ronan could hear the tremor in his own voice. This wasn't supposed to happen like this...

They staggered out of Ronan's room as best they could. The doorway was narrow and every step was a world of pain. Within a few steps, Gansey's breath had gone tight and shallow, and Ronan didn't want to think about how bad _he_ was feeling. The important thing was getting him downstairs.

But when they got to the top of the staircase, Ronan knew they had a real problem.

The main part of the house was over a hundred years old, and the stairs were steep, narrow, and worn dangerously smooth with years of use. Then there was the turn halfway down with treacherous wedge-shaped steps instead of a landing.

 _Fuck it_ , Ronan thought. There was a time for pride and taking stupid risks, and then there was now.

"Hey!" he bellowed down the stairs. "A little help, here?"

Maura appeared around the turn in the stairs so quickly Ronan thought she might have already been on her way up to see why Gansey was taking so long.

"Oh, my God! Gansey!" 

Maura ran back downstairs, shouting for Artemus. Ronan heard Blue yelling frantically from the family room, demanding to know what was going on, and what was wrong with Gansey, and would someone please tell her what had happened to Gansey.

Artemus came running, taking the stairs two at a time. He stopped for a moment as if pole-axed when he saw Gansey, but he recovered quickly and was at their side in a moment. 

"You said it was going to appear gradually! This wasn't gradual! I fucking _heard_ the arrow hit him!" Ronan yelled through furious tears, but after his initial shock, Artemus acted with the practiced calm of someone long accustomed to treating battle wounds while dealing with far worse things than Ronan's temper.

"When did this happen?" Artemus didn't waste time apologizing for, rationalizing, or explaining away his mistake. He simply got an arm behind Gansey's back, stooped down to get another behind his knees, and picked him up with gentle efficiency.

"A minute ago? Five?" Ronan had no idea how long it had taken them to travel the short distance from his room to the staircase.

Artemus nodded sharply, then carried Gansey down the stairs with disheartening ease. Artemus was taller than a man who had fathered Blue Sargent had any right to be, and Gansey looked so damned _small_ in his arms. Ronan followed as quickly as he could, leaning on the banister far more than he might normally.

Maura started up the stairs to help Ronan the rest of the way down, but he waved her off.

"I need to talk to you and Artemus later," he told her quickly, while Artemus took Gansey to the guest suite. "Also, Calla said for you to call her."

Maura did a barely perceptible double-take. Then she looked at him in a way that said that he wasn't being evaluated so much as re-considered.

"Right. I'll do that after we see to Gansey. _And_ after I see to you. What on earth did you _do_ to yourself, Ronan?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Ronan ends up having a conversation that he really, _really_ wasn't planning to have any time soon.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan and Blue are exiled. Blue feels guilty. Ronan makes a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this story is now officially super-duper AU now that _The Raven King_ is out. 
> 
> Anyhow, this chapter is a bit longer than I usually care to post, but there was no good place to break it.

Maura was as good as her word. After she was sure that Artemus could spare her for a minute, Maura insisted on looking at Ronan's injuries. Once she was satisfied that Ronan wasn't showing any obvious signs of a concussion and that he knew what to do so his feet wouldn't get gangrene and fall off, she exiled him and Blue from the guest suite so she could finish helping Artemus get Gansey settled. 

Maura promised to come fetch him and Blue once Gansey's wound had been treated and he was resting comfortably - for a given value of 'comfortably.' She did not say how long this might take.

Ronan sat slumped down at the kitchen table with his now bandaged and sock-covered feet resting on the chair opposite him. He held a bag of frozen peas to the side of his face. The four ibuprofen he had dry-swallowed were sitting uneasily on an empty stomach, but he thought things were starting to ache less. On the floor next to his chair was a half-empty tube of Neosporin, a scattering of bandage wrappers, and a pile of filthy washcloths that he (or someone else) would deal with at some undefined 'later.' 

Blue was, of course, in her flower and ribbon-bedecked chair. Yesterday, Ronan had admired the gaudiness of the thing. Today, it looked as out of place as a stripper at a funeral mass. She had a knitting project on her lap - something in a fuzzy mix of bright yellows and oranges that even Gansey would have thought twice about wearing - but it just sat there with her fingers buried in the yarn.

"I wish I knew what was going on in there. I wish I was in there, but I..." Blue took a deep, shuddering breath that was not far from a sob. "I'm not ready for this, Ronan. I thought I was, but I'm not."

"At least _you_ had fair warning," he snarled. 

He'd had none. None at all. Not about Adam, not about Declan, not about that phantom arrow. The dull, wet _thump_ and Gansey's sharp exhale played on an endless loop in his memory.

Instead of coming right back with a cutting remark of her own, something that would drown out the _thump-gasp_ Blue looked away, face reddening as she pressed her lips together in something that Ronan took a while to recognize as guilt. 

He didn't ask her about it, same as she hadn't asked him about his swollen eye or the cuts on his feet. Maybe it was because there were some things that came with growing up in a house full of psychics, just like there were some things that came with being able to walk in dreams.

"We still have five hours until sunset, right?" Maybe that was enough time for them to pull a miracle out of their collective asses. It sounded like Artemus had some kind of idea. 

Blue twisted her knitting, pulling it into an even more shapeless shape. Her face was tight with not crying. "A little less than." No doubt she had looked up the exact time the sun would vanish below the horizon. "You'll keep watch over him with me, won't you?"

The question shouldn't have surprised him, but it did.

Keep watch? As in watch Gansey die? See him lying there,dead? 

All at once, Ronan felt as if he was three feet outside his own body. He saw the blood blooming through that ridiculous lime green shirt and smeared on Gansey's hand. Blood and brains spattered on the driveway outside. A laughing figure collapsing to its knees as if the puppet strings had been burned away. Bruising where a body had lain on the ground for too long without a heartbeat. A still, sheet-covered form on a metal table. The peas dropped from his hand and he bent forward clutching the back of his head, waiting for the dizziness to pass. 

"I can't." He tried counting to twenty, lost count, tried again, gave up. "I can't."

"What? Why - "

"I _can't_ , I can't, I can't..." It came out over and over again, like a mantra. He couldn't stop the words from spilling out. None of this seemed real, but it wasn't a dream. "I can't do it. I can't."

"Ronan! Are you - "

 _"Don't."_ It came out as nearly a whisper. Then, the words stopped.

Blue went quiet. Ronan still didn't look up. A minute passed. Then another.

"Okay," she said softly. Thank God she didn't say she was sorry. "You do what you think is right. You've known him longer than I have, after all."

Funny, but there were some ways in which Blue _got_ him that Gansey or Adam or even Noah never had. Yeah, the two of them clashed and sparked and damn near drove each other to murder, but she knew about wildfire tempers and growing up in a house where the strange and miraculous was old news before breakfast was over.

Maybe she also knew that Ronan didn't need one more addition to an already too long parade of nightmares.

He heard the creak of metal on metal as she wheeled closer to him. He felt a few tentative touches before she rested her hand between his shoulders like she had back at Fox Way. The dizziness began to pass. He began to calm down. He _had_ to calm down. He had promised he would keep his shit together, and he would.

"Thank you for letting us stay at your home," she said quietly. "I'm glad you're here with me."

What she did not say was that this was because at nightfall, they would be the only two of them left.

What Ronan tried not to think was that if things had gone just a little differently, he would have been the only one left. The Third Sleeper had meant to kill her, and it was only pure dumb luck that it hadn't.

Again, Ronan saw Blue being tossed aside like she was no more than a dirty dishrag. He heard Gansey's shout of grief and rage. He felt the ground heaving underneath him as rocks were torn in half and Cabeswater _exploded_ around them.

"I'll be there to say good night," he said once he trusted himself to say the words as if nothing in the world was wrong. He had almost said 'good-bye,' but that sounded too permanent. "But I'm out of there before it actually happens. Okay?"

"Okay." 

She didn't sound happy about it, but she didn't sound pissed off about it, either.

Ronan leaned down and retrieved his peas. They sat quietly for a while, and it almost felt peaceful. The distraction of the physical pain made it easier to shove aside all the other crap. The only visible sign that anything was wrong was the way Blue fiddled with her knitting, apparently not noticing that one of the needles had slid free and that her fretting was pulling the fabric to pieces. 

Or maybe it was intentional. Who knew, when it came to her freaky so-called fashion sense. 

"Ronan? How - "

"I'm _okay,_ maggot." Just because he had lost his shit for a minute, it didn't mean he was going to fall apart completely. That wasn't going to happen. Now that he'd had a minor freakout, he could think about how he would keep Gansey safe over the coming weeks.

"Oh, _please_. Don't give me that, Mister Never-tells-a-lie. You know as well as I do that we're both so far from okay right now, we can't even see okay with binoculars! I was going to ask you how Matthew was doing."

Ronan felt a sharp twist of guilt. He had walked out on everyone last night, yeah, but there was no way in hell he could have stayed around any longer without imploding. He hoped Matthew understood that. Maybe he hadn't?

"It looked like everything was sort of catching up with him last night. He left the table not long after you did."

"Shit..." Ronan breathed out sharply through gritted teeth. He should have checked on Matthew last night instead of walking right past his door. "How did he seem to you this morning? Better? Worse?"

"I don't know. I've been up since Mom got up six-thirty but I haven't seen him at all. I was a little surprised. He's been pretty attentive," she said wryly. "It's kind of sweet, but..."

Ronan let out a short laugh that was more of a sharp exhale. "Yeah. I know. He doesn't have a hope in hell, does he?"

"Nope. He's adorable, but nope."

"I'll be sure to crush his hopes on your behalf," Ronan said casually, but his thoughts began to race. Some of that creepy stuff Gwenllian had said about Matthew started to seep in through the cracks again. And where _was_ he, anyway?

He leaned over to check the kitchen clock. It was a few minutes before noon, but Blue hadn't seen Matthew. She was confined to the first floor because of her legs, so she would have seen or at least heard him if he came downstairs, right?

Matthew should have come down to the kitchen at _some_ point before now in search of the now-defunct Pop Tarts or a gallon of milk or a pound of cheese or something. Once he'd hit puberty, Matthew's appetite had shifted from 'hearty' to 'epic.'

And if he was still upstairs, then why hadn't he shown up with all the shouting, first with Gwenllian and then with Gansey? If help was needed, Matthew was always one of the first to show up and start _doing_.

Ronan's thoughts raced even faster when it sunk in that in the aftermath of that morning's craziness, he'd failed to register that Chainsaw was still AWOL as well. Yeah, there were times when she'd go off and do bird things for a while, but she always came back. She always had, so far. When had he seen her last? Last night?

The last he'd seen of Matthew was late last night, and that was just a light under his door. Now it was coming up on noon. So where the fuck was he? 

"I - I gotta go," he said suddenly. He tossed the bag of peas on the table and stood up in a rush, cursing at the multiple jabs of pain.

"Ronan? What is it?"

"If you see Matthew, tell him I'm looking for him," he said as he hobbled out of the kitchen. He tried to keep the worry from his voice, but from the way Blue called out after him, he knew he hadn't.

An hour ago, Ronan had seen Gansey start to bleed out with no lead-up and no warning. Anything could happen at any time. Anything could have happened to Matthew. 

Anything could go wrong. _Everything_ could go wrong. Even when you thought everything was going to be okay.

Everything _had_ gone wrong. And nothing was okay, not any more.

He shouted up the stairs. "Matthew!"

No answer.

Ronan checked the downstairs, room by room. No one was in Mom's old sitting room. Artemus's blankets were folded neatly on the cot as if he were preparing to strike camp. 

Gwenllian had left the door to the study open, and Ronan risked peeking inside. She had placed stacks of books in an uneven circle and was dancing in between them, humming _Tam Lin_ to herself. It looked like she was acting out parts of the song as she hummed. Ronan stopped long enough to make sure Matthew wasn't bound and gagged in a corner, then moved on before she could spot him. 

No one was in the living room, the dining room, the bathroom, Mom and Dad's room...

He did not go into the guest suite. He knew damned well Maura and Artemus were in there working with Gansey, and they would have kicked Matthew out if he happened to be in there. Ronan was passing by the door when he heard a sob of pain followed by Maura speaking in soothing tones. He kept walking, heart beating high in his throat.

Matthew's coat still hung on the rack in the front hall, and his shoes had been kicked into the corner. Given how he'd ragged on Ronan for going out in the cold yesterday, Ronan didn't think Matthew would have gone outside without a coat, not when it was a good ten degrees colder today. He'd check if he had to, though. Every single building and childhood hiding place on the whole damn property, no matter how cold it was or how much his feet hurt and his head ached.

First, though, he had to finish searching the house. He went back upstairs, wincing as he took each step. He checked Matthew's bedroom. The bathroom. His own room, even though he'd been there not long ago. 

No bird, no brother. 

Ronan checked out his window, which overlooked the driveway. The BMW was right where it should be and the scattering of frost on the windshield told him that no one had moved it since yesterday. He hesitated outside Declan's door, and settled for knocking.

"Matthew?"

No answer. He had his hand on the knob and was bracing himself to open Declan's door when he finally admitted to himself where he should have looked in the first place. It was where Matthew would go on the rare occasions he was upset or sad about something. Ronan remembered finding him hiding in there, sobbing, after his favorite barn cat had died. 

Ronan suspected he'd put off checking there because he was afraid he _wouldn't_ find Matthew. 

He tried to take in a deep breath, but his chest was too tight. Thoughts he'd tried to keep tucked away on their shelf tumbled off and scattered all over the place.

Matthew's soul had flickered in and out of existence before Ronan had touched him.

Time had flickered the same way along the ley line last night before his older self had used him as an anchor. 

What if fixing the ley line had broken other things? 

What if...

 _No_. Ronan couldn't imagine any future where he would ever willingly or knowingly do something that would un-make Matthew. 

He would let the whole fucking world _burn_ before he he would let that happen.

 _A rare gift_ , his older self had said. In retrospect, it sounded like a caution.

Ronan swallowed down bile and limped back past his own room, the bathroom, Matthew's room, the staircase. He passed by a spare bedroom and a linen closet but didn't bother to check them. He went right to the door at the far end of the hallway. 

That door led to a room that took up a large part of an already large second floor. It was the room where Dad had taught them to play all the music he had learned growing up. It was where they had practiced and practiced until playing was as simple as breathing and the other people playing with you felt like another part of yourself. He hadn't been back in there since before Dad died.

The door was partway open, but Ronan wondered if it had been open last night. His knees nearly gave way in relief when something shiny flew past the opening with a young raven close behind in eager pursuit.

"Matthew?" he called out. "You okay?"

There was no answer from Matthew, but Chainsaw gave a sheepish _kerah._

Someone had to have thrown whatever it was she was chasing, and the only person unaccounted for was Matthew, so why hadn't he answered?

Ronan opened the door.

The music room took up well over a third of the second floor, with wide, uncovered windows on three sides. The window to the left, towards the front of the house, was a deep bay window with a built-in seat. 

Matthew had tucked himself away in there, just as he had when he was a little kid. His legs were pulled toward his chest and his left arm rested across his knees with a brass pennywhistle dangling from his hand. Ronan hadn't heard any music, and the sound would have carried throughout the house.

_Thank God he's okay..._

Chainsaw hopped up on the window-seat next to Matthew. She dropped her shiny toy, and pecked at his free hand, trying to get him to throw it again. He nudged her away.

 _"Kr-kah!"_ This was directed at Ronan. It sounded a lot like 'fix this!'

"Matthew?"

Ronan hadn't realized how much he was accustomed to Matthew's face lighting up when he saw Ronan until Matthew turned away from him, silent.

"Oh, for fuck's sake..." he muttered to himself. It looked like he had screwed up by leaving at dinner after all. He walked into the room and sat down on the window seat next to Matthew, right in Matthew's line of sight. He doubted Matthew would turn away a second time. He was right.

Matthew didn't turn away, but he didn't look up to meet Ronan's gaze, either. He didn't move at all, except to keep swinging the pennywhistle back and forth and back and forth. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, making the Lynch-blue eyes unnervingly bright. His face was as still and stony as his silence.

Ronan clenched and unclenched his hands where they rested on his thighs. He knew why Matthew hadn't come to him with his grief, even though he hated to admit it. Matthew had been close to Declan in a way Ronan hadn't, and Matthew had been actively and openly pained by the fact that his two favorite people in the whole world couldn't spend more than five minutes together without sniping at each other.

Also, Declan had been there for Matthew after Dad died. Ronan hadn't. 

Ronan wondered if things would have been different if he had remembered bringing Matthew out of a dream. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, wondering wouldn't change anything.

Even when they were all at Aglionby together, Matthew had roomed with Declan, while Ronan had said a big 'fuck you' to dorm life. For a year after Dad's death, Ronan had hardly ever seen Matthew outside of Sunday Mass while Declan saw Matthew day after day after day. Ronan and Matthew's paths had hardly ever intersected at school, and Ronan knew there were a few students who never did believe that sunny, friendly Matthew Lynch and dark, dangerous Ronan Lynch were even related, let alone brothers.

No one had ever doubted that Declan Lynch and Matthew Lynch were brothers. Ronan tensed at the flare of jealousy. It would have been bad even before he knew that Matthew was _his_. Now it was intolerable.

Ronan had never thought about it before, but Declan had known all along that Matthew was one of Ronan's dreams, and was yet another living, breathing sign that Declan wasn't like the rest of the family. He had known, but he hadn't loved Matthew any less for it. He had always, for as long as Ronan could remember, treated Matthew like the rare gift Ronan now knew he was.

A rare gift Declan believed Ronan had created. And had loved without reservation, when there were so many things about Ronan he seemed not to love or even like.

The flare died down into something much less pleasant. There were so many things Ronan would never get to ask his older brother, so many things he would never know.

At least Declan had told him the truth about Matthew. At least Ronan had had that knowledge when it counted two nights ago. He wasn't sure how things would have played out in that dream if he hadn't.

_You have no idea how lucky we were with Matthew._

When Ronan had first learned that Matthew had come out of his dreams, he had studied him for a long time, trying to see if he could tell, if he could spot anything he had not thought to notice before. 

Now, he looked again, trying to see if there was any sign of that lost child who had become Matthew. He wondered if he would ever find out who or what that child had been, or if it even mattered. 

No, he thought. It didn't matter. Matthew was Matthew, and Ronan loved him beyond all reason. No wonder that Chainsaw, who was Ronan's heart given inky black feathers and wings, had stuck close to him all day. Now it was up to Ronan to follow her example.

"Matthew?" 

Matthew did not look up. He didn't act as if he'd heard Ronan at all, so Ronan reached out tentatively, pulling his hand back several times along the way, to clasp Matthew's shoulder.

At first Ronan thought with cold, queasy fear that Matthew tried to shrug his hand away. All it was, though, was Matthew's shoulders rising and sinking with a deep, shuddering breath. 

Then he finally said something - _asked_ something - soft and scared and so very, very lost.

"Were you ever going to tell me I wasn't real?"

Time stopped. 

Time started again, but the music room seemed too bright, too cold, like he'd just stepped sideways into a dream. 

"You _are_ real. Don't be fucking stupid." Ronan had meant to sound firm and angry, but it came out shaky and weak instead of decisively putting an end to the bullshit. "You're sitting right here, aren't you?"

He gave Matthew a little shove to prove his point.

"See?" he laughed. "Real."

This time, Matthew did shrug his hand away. "Don't lie to me, Ronan. Please."

"I. Never. Lie."

Why now? _Fuck!_ Why _now?_

"Then be honest! That's not the same thing as not lying, and you know it. Please, Ronan."

Ronan clenched his fists. He ground his teeth. He could do this, he could deflect this, redirect this if Matthew's stony silence had turned to yelling, to anger, to outrage. He could yell back, storm off, slam the door, punch the wall...

But it was _Matthew_. He sounded so broken, and even though hundreds of internal voices were frantically insisting this wasn't his fault ( _he hadn't known, he didn't remember, Declan had made him promise not to tell, why did it even fucking matter_ ), Ronan knew damn well it was his responsibility.

He had no idea what to say. So he waited.

"When you asked me about how I felt in Mom's forest, it kind of freaked me out a little. I mean, why were you asking, right? And then you got all gruff and scared." He laughed, sounding as shaky as Ronan felt. "So I... well, I asked Blue about it, about what it was like when she went into the forest, and she said it felt like she was _more_ real."

Ronan was going to kill Blue. 

"And then there was that weird stuff that the crazy lady with the junk-store hairdo was saying, and she was looking at me while she said it. And you got scared again."

And then he was going to kill Gwenllian.

"So you got weirded out and you put two and two together and got, I don't know, orange?" Ronan shook his head and hit his thigh with his fist. He had to be honest. No matter how much he didn't want to be. "No. Strike that. So, you put two and two together and got 'not real'? Which by the way, is bullshit. You're every bit as real as Mom is. And that's the truth."

From the way Matthew seemed to grow smaller at the mention of Mom, that was the exact wrong thing to say. Probably because, now that Ronan thought about it, Ronan had just confirmed what Matthew had only been fearing to this point.

"I didn't put it together all at once. I started wondering. Thinking. Wondering why some things, some people, felt familiar even though I'd never seen them before. Or why things would happen and I would think 'oh, I remember this' even though I didn't, and now all of a sudden that doesn't happen any more."

What? Ronan started to ask why Matthew hadn't told him any of this, but remembered that Matthew _had_ said something yesterday, only it had gone right in one ear and out the other. 

He also remembered that right now was really, _really_ not a good time to get snotty about Matthew not telling him things.

Ronan thought about that lost, frightened, flickering child for a moment, then put that thought back up on its shelf.

"I told myself I was just being stupid. But then I heard you talking about me to someone last night," Matthew said dully. 

Ronan couldn't stand it. He couldn't stand Matthew sounding like this. He had to get out of there, but he had to stay. Matthew needed him to stay. 

"I didn't hear much," Matthew continued. "I mean, I didn't, like, eavesdrop or anything. I couldn't sleep, and I heard you talking to someone so I went to see if you were okay, and..."

He shrugged, not explaining any further, but Ronan remembered telling Calla the whole damned story about Matthew and then coming back upstairs after his attempt to talk to Gansey and seeing Matthew's light under his door.

 _Shit_.

"I'm sorry, Matty." He hated those words, oh, how he hated those words, but there was nothing else he could say right then that wouldn't be a lie.

"So it's true, then. I wasn't born. I was dreamed."

Hadn't they already covered that?

Or maybe Matthew needed to say it so he could actually hear it. He still sounded lost, but Ronan didn't think he sounded as scared.

"Yeah. But I don't give a shit about that. And neither did Dad. Or Mom. We could have pulled you out of a box of Cracker Jacks and you'd still be my punk-ass little brother. Nothing's ever gonna change that."

Matthew actually laughed at that, soft and watery, and Ronan thought that maybe this conversation wouldn't be completely terrible after all.

But no, Matthew had one more question to ask.

"So why am I not asleep the way Mom was before you took her into the forest? The way everything else Dad dreamed is?"

There were so many things Ronan could have said that would have deflected Matthew's question, but Ronan had promised honesty, and he had failed Matthew too many times already. He couldn't do that to him again. Not any more. 

Ronan drew up his legs and rested an arm across his knees, unconsciously mirroring Matthew's position. He let his attention be distracted by Chainsaw, who was hopping along the floor in pursuit of a bug. Then he took a deep and surprisingly steady breath.

"You're not asleep because Dad didn't dream you."

"What? But - "

" _I_ did."

He refused to look over at Matthew as what he said sunk in. He didn't want to see what the results would be. Fear, revulsion, anger, shock... None of it was anything he ever wanted to see on Matthew's face.

But at the same time, the sense of relief at having it _out there_ was enough to make him see spots.

"You... Why didn't you tell me?" It sounded like _what did I do wrong?_

Relief also gave him the freedom to be angry. Angry was comfortable. Angry was safe. Angry kept his heart from breaking at the anguish in Matthew's voice.

Just so long as he had it under control. Which he did.

"Because I didn't fucking remember, that's why!" 

The outburst startled a sharp laugh out of Matthew, and God, that sounded good. Maybe they were going to get out of this okay after all. 

"I didn't even have a god-damned clue until a few months ago, okay? I'm still trying to get my head around it and figure out what it means for you and for me... Look - I was just a little kid when it happened. I only know because Declan finally told - " 

"Declan?" 

Just like that, it was all undone and worse than undone. Matthew sounded not just lost this time but _wounded_.

Ronan said nothing. He closed his eyes, let his head thump back against the window, and silently blasted himself with every profanity he knew.

" _Declan_ knew?"

Ronan kept his eyes closed. "I'm sorry," he said again, even though it fixed jack shit. 

He had only been honest, he had only done what Matthew had asked, but it felt like he had just taken a big dump on Matthew's memories of Declan. 

That was not what he had wanted. Yeah, he had been jealous, but this was not what he had wanted. Not at all.

"For what it's worth, I think Declan was just trying to protect you. Us. I had no fucking clue he knew until this summer. I had no idea just how much shit Dad was involved in until Declan told me." 

And he still didn't think that Declan had told him _everything_. What else was out there that he didn't know about? What other Greenmantles and Gray Men or even worse were lurking in the shadows, waiting to bring Ronan's world down around his ears?

Just one more fucking thing to worry about. He'd add it to the list.

God, he was tired.

"Maybe that's why I didn't tell you anything, either. That, and I'm still freaking the fuck out and trying to figure shit out." 

Things like how to untie Matthew's life from his own. Ronan knew he wasn't the safest sort of person to anchor anyone's life to. And then there were all the recent revelations that he still had barely begun to process.

"But I will tell you. Once I figure it out, I'll tell you."

As soon as he said it, he instantly wanted to unsay it, so he could keep the truth hidden if it was unbearable. But he couldn't let himself do that. Matthew had asked for honesty.

"I promise."

He said it to himself as much as he said it to Matthew.

Matthew said nothing.

"Look, um, just so you know, I might be kind of scarce the rest of the day. Gansey's not doing so great right now."

He looked over at Matthew. His head was bowed, but the tips of his ears were red with shame. "I heard the yelling earlier. I'm sorry I didn't - "

"Don't." 

Ronan didn't say it was okay or that he understood or that he was sorry that Matthew had found out by accident what he should have been told on purpose long before now. 

"I didn't say it to make you feel guilty. I just wanted to let you know what's going on and why I'll be..." Ronan thought for a moment. "Matthew, you know I'd never do anything to hurt you, right?"

"I know you never meant to," Matthew said softly.

Ronan figured it was the best he could hope for, no matter that it felt like a knife between the ribs. What made it worse was that he knew that Matthew would never have intended it that way.

"Ronan?"

"Hm?"

Matthew didn't say anything at first. Then:

"Would it be okay if I came down to see Gansey, later? Um, before sunset, I mean?"

Ronan's first instinct was to say 'no.' If it was him, the fewer people who saw him at his weakest, the better. But then he thought of what Gansey would want.

"I think he'd like that." Gansey and Matthew had _clicked_ right off the bat, much as Matthew had also _clicked_ with Blue. And Adam.

Again, Ronan couldn't help thinking about how Matthew and Noah would have liked each other instantly. Then he took that thought and carefully placed it on a shelf, along with so many other thoughts.

"Yeah, I think he'd like that a lot."

Matthew hmm'd in agreement.

"I'm heading back downstairs. It's lunchtime. Come down with - "

"No." It sounded harsh, but that might have been Ronan's own mood filtering Matthew's words. "I just want to... I'm going to stay here a bit. Okay?"

There was no apology or explanation. Just an unspoken _go away, leave me alone,_ underlying that plaintive 'okay.'

Ronan fought back the urge to demand to know what what would restore Matthew's trust, or what he could do to _fix_ things. He tried shove aside the aching desire to have happy, ebullient Matthew back, because he knew he wouldn't. Not now, and maybe not for a good long while. 

None of them were who they were two weeks ago. Not even Matthew. And there was nothing Ronan could do to change that.

As Ronan stood to leave, Chainsaw flew up towards his shoulder. Ronan lifted an arm, signaling her to land on his wrist instead. She adjusted her flight and banked to a gentle landing, digging her claws into his sleeve.

She cocked her head curiously. _"Kerah?"_

"Keep an eye on him, will ya?" he whispered. Then he lifted his arm sharply, sending her back into flight. She glided right back to the window seat. Matthew didn't look up, but he put down the pennywhistle and reached down to stroke her head.

Ronan left. He closed the door behind him. It hadn't escaped him that Matthew had not said anything about the swelling around Ronan's eye or asked why Ronan was limping as he walked away.

Things would get better, Ronan told himself. They'd get through this. They'd figure out what to do about Gansey. They would.

He made it only halfway back to the stairs before he leaned back hard against a wall and slid to the floor. He sat there, legs out, head back, and arms hanging limp by his side.

How the fuck had everything gone so wrong, so fast? Two weeks ago, he had kissed Adam. He had been happy, two weeks ago.

Now, he wondered if there was some way he could trade places with Gansey and just go away and not _be_ for weeks and weeks and weeks...

He wasn't sure how long he sat there, not doing anything, barely even _thinking_ , when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

"Ronan?"

It was Maura. When she got to the top of the stairs and saw him, she let out a long, burdened sigh. She did not ask him if he was okay. Instead, she walked over and hunkered down next to him to check the side of his face. 

"I think icing it helped," she said. "The swelling doesn't look as bad as I feared."

He shrugged.

"I wish there was something I could do to make things easier for you," she said, and he knew that she didn't just mean him. She reached out and gently brushed her hand across the top of his head. "I hate not being able to do anything." 

Part of him bristled at the touch, but the rest of him was too damn tired and wanted Mom to be there instead of her. He wanted Mom to be there so bad...

"What happened now," he asked, only it felt more like a statement than a question. Of course something had happened. It was never going to end, was it?

"Nothing happened. We need you to dream something for us, if you're willing." She stood up and held out a hand to help him to his feet. 

"For Gansey?" 

She nodded. He hesitated a moment, then stood up, waving the offer of help away. 

"Yeah. I'll do it."

Maura gave him a look that was as full of judgment and skepticism as anything her daughter could muster.

"Also, I just got off the phone with Calla."

Ronan groaned and thought about sitting right back down on the floor. That fucking phone call last night...

He didn't want to talk about dreams right now, and he especially didn't want to talk about last night's dream.

_No one said you have to tell them anything._

But he had promised honesty to Matthew. Something told him that the promise extended to this, as well. 

So, when Maura headed back down the stairs, clearly expecting him to follow, he went with her. Grudgingly, but he went.

This was going to _suck_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: After a brief expository lull that touches on some of the questions in the summary, _kaboom_.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few questions are answered in part. Calla doesn't talk about quantum physics. A fuse is lit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up, but I work has been kicking my tail and I had to go out of town this weekend. Anyhow, after this relatively quiet, expository chapter (that starts to answer a few questions), things will start going BOOM. I'll be interested to see if anyone picks up on the thing that will eventually make the BOOM. 
> 
> Specific warnings in this chapter for recollections of Kavinsky being twisted as hell and some imagined non-con (not graphic, but still traumatizing for the one doing the imagining).

For the second time that day, Maura Sargent mother-henned Ronan down the stairs. Ronan prayed this wasn't the start of a pattern. 

Artemus was waiting for them in the kitchen, which smelled like a hayloft in September thanks to some tea Maura had brewed. Ronan accepted a cup of the greeny-gold liquid even though he had zero intention of drinking it. It was just nice to wrap his hands around the warmth and have the smell of it carry him back to better times.

Maybe it would make this conversation less miserable than he knew it was going to be.

The afternoon sun slanted across the kitchen table, making a moat of light between Ronan and the two adults. Calla was present via the speaker on Ronan's phone. The phone sat right in the middle of the sunbeam, which turned it into a rectangle of fire and another sort of buffer between him and the other two. Ronan thought Blue would have been a better buffer, being more squarely on _his_ side, but she was with Gansey.

Ronan couldn't fault her for that. 

"You already told them everything I told you?" Ronan asked the rectangle.

"I did," Calla said. "But what I didn't say is that I did a reading about the group of you this morning, and I have to ask - what the flaming _hell_ is going on out there?"

Maura started to ask Calla something, but Ronan lifted a hand to cut her off. "Remember how you asked me what I did to myself?"

"Ronan woke up looking like he'd been through the wars," Maura explained for Calla's benefit. Ronan glared at her but went ahead and told the story about meeting his older self and how the ley line had become unmoored from time.

Artemus listened with serene quiet, occasionally starting to ask a question, but always stopping himself and motioning for Ronan to carry on. More than those not-questions, he would intermittently give a little nod of something that looked like agreement, as if he was being told things he already knew.

Maura, on the other hand, listened more fretfully, tapping her knuckles against her lips. She occasionally let out a little _ah_ or _huh_ as if what she heard surprised her but made sense even so.

As they listened, Artemus and Maura kept exchanging looks - narrowed eyes, a fleeting frown, a tilt of the head - in a quiet running commentary by two people who knew each other well enough not to need words.

Except...

Ronan noticed that every time Maura realized she was having one of those silent conversations, her face went carefully neutral and she re-focused her attention on him instead of Artemus. But she kept forgetting, and those silent conversations started over and over again.

She had loved Artemus once. And now she didn't. Or didn't want to.

Ronan saw it, but he didn't understand it. Just like he didn't understand the wedding ring on his older self's hand.

He did not tell the others about the ring. It wasn't any of their fucking business.

"Well, that would explain a few _incidents_ over the years," Calla said, dry as ever. Maura laughed the way people did when things weren't funny. Artemus nodded slowly and solemnly, an old, cold sorrow in his dark eyes.

"'Incidents'? You mean like me meeting my older and younger selves? Or why time is so weird in Cabeswater?" 

They could spend hours in the forest and have it be only minutes outside, like they'd gone to fucking Narnia or something. Or they'd move from season to season, like the flickering in his dream, only less violent and abrupt. He'd almost become used to it, and Adam had even learned how to navigate it, somewhat. Did what he had done mean that Cabeswater now moved in ordinary time? He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

Maura and Artemus had another of those silent conversations. Calla went _hmmmm_ and Ronan found himself wishing she was there in person.

"Doubt it. There's no reason for time to be strictly linear," Calla said. "The way cause and effect usually work for most people _tricks_ us into thinking it is."

Yup, this conversation was going to be miserable, all right. 

"I've already got a headache, thanks."

Calla cackled. "I would have paid cash money to see you get into a fight with yourself. Cash. Money."

"Fuck you," he said, but she'd startled a grin from him. She couldn't see it, but from the way she laughed, she must have heard it in his voice.

Maura cleared her throat and raised an eyebrow. It made her look very much like Blue. "I've heard people explain time as something like the surface of a river - you can go any direction you want, although some ways are easier than others. You can go under at one point and come up at a completely different point. You can even get _out_ of the river altogether. But for most people, the current simply carries them along in one direction without their say-so."

Ronan supposed that made sense, if he didn't think about it too hard.

"Or, you can also think of time as being like a net." Maura held her hands out in the sunbeam, fingers splayed so their shadows cast a pattern of thick, overlapping lines. "Most people can only see one part of a single thread at a time, in one direction at a time."

"Generally the past," Calla said helpfully. "Although I've met a few poor bastards who can only see in the other direction. It's about as unpleasant as it sounds."

Maura pursed her lips " _Thank_ you, Calla. Anyway, the threads of time and the way they intersect make a coherent fabric - cause and effect relating to one another in logical patterns - not as chaotic as a river. And that's because of the corpse... sorry, the ley lines. If I'm right about them, and I may not be, they're part of what give that fabric stability and strength. They define its shape. They keep it from warping or collapsing or flapping loose in the wind. If you prefer the river analogy, think of the ley lines as the levees that keep the river in its banks. So if a ley line were to snap loose in time..."

"Everything would go straight to hell," Calla said. She sounded morbidly cheerful about the prospect. "Effect would follow cause, and events could get entangled across time so that - "

"Calla, if you start talking about string theory or quantum physics again, I _will_ hang up on you." The weariness in Maura's voice told Ronan this was an old and familiar point of contention. She leaned over the table and spoke to Ronan in a low voice. "She's been obsessed with the subject ever since that stupid NOVA mini-series."

"Hey. Brian Greene is kinda hot for a nerd," Calla retorted.

Artemus was the one who finally took pity on Ronan and his achy head. "Regardless of how or why, you and your older self kept reality from being torn asunder. Your older self said that this time, our time, was close to when the break in the spirit road occurred, did he not? Perhaps your other self could have anchored the line to his own time, but the damage might well have been irreparable by then."

Maura steepled her hands and closed her eyes as she sounded things out. "So, Ronan - _our_ Ronan - was necessary to fix things as close as possible to the break, but wouldn't know how to fix it. Older Ronan obviously knew what to do, but couldn't fix the break close enough to the right point in time, so..."

There was a moment where no one said what they thought.

"Risky," Calla said at last, with no other explanation. Maura nodded grimly.

There was another silence after this, but it had a different feel to it. Neither woman said she wished Persephone was there, but Ronan could see it in the tightness of Maura's mouth and the steely brightness in her eyes.

He found himself hoping Calla was doing okay.

"I don't get it," Ronan said once the silence became too heavy. "I dream shit and make it real. For me, the ley line's just a fucking power cord. Adam's the one who - " 

Ronan gripped his mug tightly, closed his eyes, and let the scent take him back to simpler times for just a moment.

Maura leaned forward again, and Ronan was glad that the table was wide enough to keep her from trying to put a hand on his shoulder or some shit like that. 

"Despite what I said earlier, Ronan, we don't know nearly as much as I would like about the ley line, and we know next to nothing about what _you_ can do, or how, or why. But..." 

Maura had another one of those silent conversations with Artemus, who thought for a moment, then nodded.

"You work with dreams, with sleep, and sleep is the brother to death," Artemus said. 

Calla picked up the thread. "And what you've been calling the ley line, we know better as 'the corpse road.' Souls - usually the dead, but _any_ soul that's kicked loose of its body - are drawn to it like a magnet."

Ronan remembered Gansey saying something about that. He'd even gone and pulled an overnight out at a church to test some theory or another. Weirdly enough, Gansey had managed to catch his own voice on tape even though he swore up and down and back and forth that he hadn't uttered a peep all night.

It had been the first time Ronan had seen magic that wasn't something created by him or his father. It had managed to be both reassuring and terrifying as fuck at the same time.

"The dead are drawn towards certain times along the ley line as well. Saint Mark's Eve, in April, is an example," Maura said as if reading his mind - which was not outside the realm of possibility. "Blue and I keep watch every year to take down the names of those who will die in the next year. Most of our clients say they would want to know if we heard their names, or the name of someone they loved."

Oh, that wasn't macabre at _all_ , Ronan thought with a shudder of revulsion. He remembered Blue getting a notebook out of a big stack of notebooks and finding Jesse Dittley's name in there. What would Ronan do, if he knew he was going to die? What would he have done, if he'd had warning that Dad was going to die? Could he have changed it?

He damn well would have tried, consequences be damned.

Something about that stack of notebooks bugged him in a way it hadn't when he'd first heard about them. He could tell there was something he was missing, something important, but he couldn't pin it down, not yet, not entirely.

"After death, most souls travel along the spirit road until they reach their end and move on." Artemus drew his hand through the air in a straight, even path, flicking his fingers upwards at the end. 

"But some souls become trapped along the way." He repeated his earlier gesture, only this time he abruptly clenched his fist halfway through. "Perhaps the spirit road becomes damaged or diverted. Or, they themselves are too corrupted or too weak to make the journey. Whichever it is, they cannot exist on the spirit road for long. They would begin to lose their... what is the word? Virtue. Yes, virtue. They would become less than what they were, on and on until they vanished completely."

"Would getting killed on the ley line trap them there?" Ronan asked, notebooks of death forgotten for the moment in light of this new knowledge. His own voice sounded as if it came from far away.

Maura's head snapped upright, and she blinked at him in surprise. Again, Ronan got the feeling he was being re-evaluated. 

"Yes. Yes, I do believe such a thing is possible," Artemus said.

Like what happened to Noah. Sacrificed to the ley line, and tied to the ley line. Even before Neeve cut him down, he had been fading. Decaying. 

And of course, Adam had -

No. _No_. A shivering tightness in took hold in his chest.

"It could be," said Artemus, "that your abilities can do more than bring dreams out from the spirit road. And that your affinity with dreams is tied to an affinity with the dead and lost."

Lost. Like Persephone. Like Adam. 

"So you think the baby I found was a lost soul?" Ronan asked, cutting off whatever Maura was starting to say and he was starting to think.

It was safer, so much safer, to think about Matthew instead of Adam, no matter how much new guilt twisted at his gut. He also wondered about Orphan Girl. As the years went by, she seemed to grow ever younger and ever more scared. Was that part of a soul's undoing? Fuck - no wonder she was so frantic for him to get her out of there. _Next time,_ he vowed.

"That would be _my_ guess," Calla said. "Creating animals is impressive as hell, but could a teenager and a toddler create a functional human being from scratch? I doubt it."

Ronan, to his immense surprise, agreed with her. Bringing Matthew out had been vastly different from bringing Chainsaw out.

With Chainsaw, he had been thinking about the ravens woven throughout his tattoo at the same time he was idly, despairingly longing for something he could be unafraid to show kindness to, something that would understand him and his moods with no explanation. These thoughts had rolled together into a tangle of sheer, undefinable _want_ until, without knowing why, he had cupped his hands into a nest. Then, a baby raven had hatched from an egg made of nothing and he had brought her out of his dreams.

The baby had appeared far away in the forest without his thinking of it. Ronan knew the difference between dreams and realities, and that baby had been _real_ , and the flickering in and out of existence had been something completely new to him. Yeah, Ronan was fairly sure he'd done some things that made Matthew more _Matthew_ , but he remembered telling Gansey that 'rescued' sounded like the right word for what he had done.

 _Rescued_. That memory opened another set of memories: all of those cheerfully bullshit stories his father used to tell about how he wooed their mother - fighting his way through forests of unquenchable fire, slaying immortal beasts, and climbing unscalable towers to rescue her - and Ronan wondered how much of those stories weren't actually bullshit after all.

Before Ronan could poke at that thought any more, another memory fell off the shelf, unbidden, bursting wide open before he could catch it. 

Mom and Matthew had _not_ been the only dream-people he had known. There had been one other. 

Prokopenko. 

Kavinsky's favorite forgery. 

Kavinsky claimed he had killed the original Prokopenko, and Ronan had zero reason to think he'd been lying. Had he... No. 

Ronan was almost a hundred percent sure that Prokopenko was nothing like Matthew or Mom. That he was, in fact, nothing but a forgery. A fake.

Ronan thought he could pinpoint when the real Prokopenko had been murdered. Prokopenko had been away from school for a week, and Kavinsky had been so amped up and volatile that even Jiang, Skov, and Swan were steering clear of him. Then, when Proko came back, Kavinsky and the others returned to their fucked-up version of normal, but Prokopenko was just sort of _there_. Rumor was, he had huffed too much paint thinner and fried his brain, but his parents were paying up to make up for the shit grades. 

Ronan had believed the paint thinner rumors at the time, but now that he thought about it, Prokopenko was kind of like Mom and Matthew were when they were in Cabeswater. He'd just followed Kavinsky around like a loyal and not-very-bright attack dog. If Chainsaw was a reflection of Ronan's soul, then was not-Prokopenko a reflection of Kavinsky's? Or was it something else?

Another memory burst open without warning. Kavinsky slapping Prokopenko on the ass, drawling out a lewd and lazy _Hey, fuckpuppet._ Ronan remembered just rolling his eyes as Prokopenko smiled amiably and didn't even bother to sass Kavinsky back. Now, all sorts of implications slotted into place, like all those not-quite-right Mitsubishis in that field, and the large patch of freshly dug earth near the edge of the field...

His vision started to gray out along the edges, and instinct hunched him over.

What the fuck had he been thinking, taking _pills_ that Kavinsky had dreamed up? There were so many fuzzy spots from that summer. Ronan didn't _think_ anything had happened beyond what he could remember - those spots were only fuzzy, not blank - but...

But he was still struck with random imaginings of not finding Matthew in time. Or of opening the trunk of that car and seeing Matthew's frightened eyes only for them disappear in a blaze of dragonfire. Or of all the many, many things that _could_ have happened in one of those fuzzy spots.

"Ronan?"

His throat tightened and his heart fluttered at the thought of all the ways things could have gone so very, very wrong. They almost had. He could imagine Matthew's screams of terror and pain. He could imagine the feel of Kavinsky's hand snaking down his body and knowing he was too stoned to do anything about it.

 _Not real_ , he told himself. _Not real_.

He knew the difference. He had to hold on to that. He had to hold on. He had to -

"Ronan!"

Maura's voice pulled him out of the spiral of memories, but he was already shivering. He thought he might throw up.

Instead, he sat back up. He willed the moment to pass, and it did. Mostly. He took a swig of the now-cool tea to wash the taste of bile out of his mouth. To his surprise, the tea tasted exactly like it smelled. He took another sip and held the taste and the smell in his mind, letting the calm of a lazy September day loosen the tightness in his chest and throat. 

"What happened?" Maura asked, even as Calla, who couldn't see what was going on, demanded to know what was going on. "You went away on us for a moment."

Ronan shrugged. "Just tired," he said. That was probably it.

"Well, you've had a rough couple of days," Calla observed. "Hey - are you eating enough? Maura, are you making sure he's eating enough?"

"Yeah. Whatever." He'd be fine.

"Yes, Calla," Maura said, sing-song. She gave Ronan a look that said that he _would_ be eating dinner tonight whether he wanted to or not.

He gave her a return look telling her not to expecting him to go down easy.

"Okay, so that explains Matthew, maybe." Ronan was eager to get the conversation back to his dreams - a situation he never would have imagined before now. "So what's up with the other crap I've been bringing out? Stuff that's not my little brother."

He explained how bringing these things out wasn't like bringing out other things. For one thing, he didn't remember seeing them in his dreams. For another, there was none of the usual paralysis when he woke, and the item could be in his hands or halfway across the room.

Calla spoke up. "I didn't put things together until just now, but as near as I can figure, Ronan is bringing out stray memories from the souls caught on the corpse road."

_Oh._

The ring. The tape. The jar of lotion.

Familiar, comfortable memories that Ronan now understood were not his, but his mom's memories about him, about his father, about her favorite books...

Maura knotted her hands together so tightly her knuckles went bone-white, and Ronan could see her fight to keep herself composed. "Persephone's bowl."

There was a pause before Calla replied with a simple 'yes.'

"Also, all of the things I checked had a similar feel to them," Calla continued, and Ronan knew the kind of control that made a voice go tight and harsh like that. "They're all _good_ memories - things important to the person who remembered them."

Important? Adam had thought those stupid gifts were important? All those months ago?

All those months they had wasted.

"Perhaps they are the soul's way of keeping hold of who they were, and they are only appearing now because of the recent disruption to the spirit road, like flotsam washed ashore after a shipwreck." Artemus said, as if this was just a puzzle and not about real people who should have been there. Ronan did not miss the way Maura shifted in her seat, putting a little more distance between herself and Artemus while also taking him out of her line of sight.

Artemus quieted and seemed to draw into himself with a puzzled look on his face, as if realizing he'd made a mistake but not what the mistake was.

"Throw in how close we are to the solstice, and no wonder everything's so screwy," Calla said. "Given that and the reading I did this morning, I think I need to come out there. Today. I can't shake the feeling that something big is about to go down, and that you're going to need all the help you can get."

While Calla and Maura argued about the meaning of the something big (was she sure it wasn't just about Gansey's curse being due to take hold?) and the wisdom of leaving Fox Way under Jimi's auspices on a psychically potent day (did Calla not _remember_ what happened in 2008?), Ronan thought about everything they had said and what it all meant.

Memories. Other people's memories. And Cabeswater had been telling him to remember. But remember _what?_ And why? 

God, he wished Adam was here to help him puzzle this out.

 _Adam_. Ronan had brought Adam's memories out of his dreams. Did that mean Adam was trapped on the ley line, somehow? Did that mean he could be brought back? And would he be Adam? Or would it be a new start, the way it had been for the soul that had become Matthew?

(And Ronan was starting to have some suspicions about that, ones he didn't care to look at too closely right now, but all sorts of little correspondences started slotting into place, things Matthew had said about what he remembered...)

And then he remembered all that shit Gwenllian had said about lost ones that he was supposed to find or something. And then, there was what Gansey had said about Mom:

_Maybe that means whatever makes your mother your mother... is somewhere else, too._

The memory of Gansey's voice overlaid the sound of Maura and Calla's bickering and Ronan tried so very, very hard to resist the hope that was battering at him, demanding entrance.

He'd brought Mom's wedding ring out. Maybe the part of her that made her _her_ had become snagged on the ley line, somehow, just as it pulled at Matthew whenever he went into Cabeswater. But Matthew was always _himself_ again whenever they left Cabeswater. So maybe, just maybe, now that he knew that, now that he knew to go _look_ for Mom, he could - 

But, but... What about all those warnings about being too late? Gwenllian had said something about that. So had Orphan Girl, the last time he saw her. Older him had said it, too. Too late for what? Was that just about anchoring the ley line, or was it about something else?

_Shit._

What would anchoring the ley line have done to the souls trapped there? Did that mean it was too late to do anything for Mom? For Adam? Was that why older him had said they were lucky with Matthew?

Ronan put his hands to the side of his head and focused on his breathing. He couldn't... This was Gansey's last night. He had to keep his shit together for that. He had to make sure Matthew was okay. 

Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow he'd drive out to Cabeswater and check on Mom. Make sure she was still there. See if she was wearing her wedding ring...

"Ronan?"

Ronan shuddered back to the here and now, shaking free of all his colliding thoughts. "Sorry," he grumped. "Tired."

"Uh-huh." Maura looked skeptical. She also looked pissed, but Ronan didn't think it was with him. She pushed his phone back over to him - the call was disconnected. 

Ronan wondered if Maura or Calla had won the argument. His money was on Calla, and the thought improved his mood - slightly.

"We'll talk more about this tomorrow. Right now, we need you to dream something. Are you up for it?" She would have accepted a 'no,' but there was no way Ronan was going to say anything other than:

"If it's for Gansey? Just name it." 

It was so damned good to finally have _something_ to do.

* * *

Two hours before sunset, Ronan lay down on the family room couch and fell into a dream while holding a very short list in his mind. 

When he opened his eyes, it was in a cold and leafless forest. He stood up from the frozen ground and turned to check in all directions, wondering if he would see anyone. 

For a brief, breathless moment, he thought he saw a familiar, slender figure in among the trees, but when he looked again, it wasn't a person but a gap between two trees, a negative space his brain had latched onto as a positive. 

_You have a list, and not much time. Get to work, Lynch,_ he told himself, shoving aside any disappointment. He had a job to do, and people who were counting on him.

His list was simple, only two items long, but simple didn't always mean easy.

Ronan thought _spring_ and limped off through the forest. He was so braced for things to go wrong that he nearly stumbled when the temperature started to rise and the undergrowth began to green out.

He started to search for the first item on his list: a handful of wild white roses, not quite fully bloomed.

It didn't take too long to find them, and he had no difficulty gathering a few half-opened blossoms, but the fact that it wasn't difficult made him uneasy. He used the pockets of his hoodie to hold the flowers while he went to look for the second item on his list - three walnut-sized fluorite crystals identical to the one Maura had pulled out of her purse. 

Roses to hold off corruption and fluorite for some sort of protection or warding against other random bad shit. Part of him thought it was New Age bullshit and cringed at the idea of being complicit in something that might be just one step removed from witchcraft. Most of him was desperate to do anything that might help Gansey and salvage one good thing out of this fucking mess. Besides, of all the things he'd done to put black marks on his soul, this wouldn't even rank in the top ten.

As he searched for the crystals and fought to keep them in mind, his thoughts kept drifting back to the ley line and all the people tied to it in one way or another. Adam. Mom. Matthew. Noah. All this new information seemed too big, like he couldn't get enough perspective on it to see how it all tied together.

He found the first crystal in the bottom of a swift, shallow stream. It was a flash of deep violet and icy green among round, rust-colored stones. The current was strong enough to rattle smaller stones along the stream bed towards a deeper, wilder section of rapids. Ronan reached in, gasping at how painfully cold it was, and he nearly knocked the stone loose into the current before he took hold of it.

He held tight to the crystal, fixing the feel and look of it in his mind, but even as he concentrated, other thoughts pulled at him. He had forgotten something, something important that had almost occurred to him earlier but he'd been distracted. What was it?

He was still puzzling it out when he spotted the second crystal in the middle of a thorn bush on the edge of a cliff. The stone was caught in the fork of a branch and was only kept from falling into thin air by another branch that crossed just below. Getting it free was fiddly, profanity-riddled work that left him with a scratched up hand and blood stains on his cuff.

Whatever it was he'd forgotten, it had something to do with the ley line, and it felt like something he should have figured out long before now.

The third crystal was lodged in a crack in the earth, almost but not quite out of reach. If he wasn't careful, he'd end up pushing it further in and away. He forced himself to work carefully even though he was feeling the first tugs of wakefulness. But eventually, he took hold of it. He stood up and gathered all the found items back into his hands and focused his intent on bringing them all back with him.

He came close to losing everything, though, when something else caught his eye. A piece of paper? No, a book... no, that wasn't quite right. He wanted to look closer, but he needed to focus on the roses (soft blossoms and wiry stems, coldly silky petals, delicate but overpowering scent) and crystals (strangely warm, slick surfaces and sharp edges, icy green shading to indigo and then to purple) if he was going to bring them back.

He closed his eyes, and then he felt the softness of the couch under his back and heard the crackle of a newly laid fire. He felt the sting of scratches on his hand and the cold wet of his soaked sleeve. He could feel the flowers and the stones on his chest, corralled in place by his hands. There was the usual stab of anxiety at not being able to move, but he was at least able to open his eyes. 

Matthew stood watch by the end of the couch, startled and worried.

Funny, how it was possible to feel both relieved and guilty at the same time.

"Ronan?" 

Ronan couldn't speak, of course, and Matthew's worry started to shade towards freaking out. Ronan had no clue how to spell out 'just chill' via blinking, so there was nothing he could do for Matthew. 

But then he was able to move. He sat up and put the items he'd dreamed on the coffee table. "I'm okay," he said. It was all he trusted himself to say. Too many thoughts clanged around his head, and a lot of them were about Matthew.

Like, how right now, he looked completely pole-axed.

"Uh, that was the first time you saw me take something out of a dream, right?"

"I don't - " Matthew let go of whatever he was about to say. "I don't know? You, uh, your hand is all cut up. It wasn't a second ago."

"I'm okay," Ronan said, even as he checked the damage. The scratches weren't deep, but the cuff of his hoodie had smeared the blood all over his wrist. "It's no biggie. I lost a fight with a thorn bush, but I got everything I needed." 

Although he _was_ curious about what that book or paper or whatever was. Wait - it was a notebook. Yeah, that was it.

Not that he knew what any of it meant. Maybe he should have tried to bring it back. But then he would have lost the stuff he had promised to bring back for Gansey.

"How are you holding up?" Ronan asked cautiously. He watched for any cues that would tell him how much trouble he was still in with Matthew. Matthew just sort of hugged himself, clearly still wigged out by seeing Ronan wake up with blood smeared all over his hand and wrist.

"Okay. I think. I'm still, you know..." Matthew shrugged. "I think it's good that I know the truth? And at least I know you'll tell me whatever you figure out."

"Yeah," Ronan said, even as he thought about some of the things he had learned that afternoon. He decided it would be a good long while before he started poking at those suspicions again. If he ever did. He looked out the window. The sky was still light, but it wouldn't be for much longer. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Four-fifteen." Matthew cast a glance at the darkening sky, then back at Ronan. "Gansey's asking for you."

Ronan was halfway across the room before Matthew finished speaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Everything goes straight to hell.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey says goodbye. Maura makes soup. Ronan jumps to conclusions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry for the delay between chapters, but work has been a bit fraught (10 hour days and crazy deadlines). Also, this chapter was harder than I expected to write, and I hope and pray it works the way I want it to. I'd love to hear from you all what you think, even if it's what didn't quite work for you. Anyhow, just one more chapter and the epilogue to go!
> 
> ALSO, specific warnings for this chapter are in the end notes, so check there if you'd rather wade in forewarned.

There was less than half an hour left until sunset.

Maura met Ronan at the guest room door, raising an eyebrow as if to ask 'what took you so long?' 

By way of answer, Ronan shoved the white roses and fluorite crystals at her without a word. 

Maura nodded a grim thanks and took the dream items into the room. Ronan began to follow her, but stopped in the doorway to see what damage had been done to the room. Or maybe what stopped him was the memory of this room being forbidden to him and his brothers, filled as it was with all the delicate and irreplaceable non-dream things that would not have survived prolonged exposure to three teenage boys.

Ronan knew that Maura and Artemus had been 'preparing' the guest room for Gansey's long sleep, but he wasn't sure exactly what that meant. He was half expecting weird symbols to be painted in blood all over the old-fashioned floral wallpaper or carved into the antique bedroom set, but the only obvious additions were the large bundles of dried herbs tied to the top of each bedpost and a plume of white smoke curling up from a brass incense burner on the dresser. He saw no sign of Artemus or Gwenllian but thought he heard voices from Dad's study across the hall.

Maura placed a fluorite crystal in each corner of the room. Then she deftly tore the petals off the roses and scattered them in front of the door to the bathroom and door to the hall (giving Ronan a quizzical look while doing so) and underneath the room's three windows.

Once she left, Ronan finally stepped into the room, mindful of the rose petals, and was at once enveloped in a dusky-sweet scent that flung him straight back to High Mass and the dark, soaring spaces of an old cathedral. For a moment, the old and impractically high four poster bed was an altar, and he had to consciously stop himself from genuflecting as he drew near.

Gansey was propped up comfortably on the bed - not laid out like a corpse, thank God - against a huge pile of pillows. The bloodied lime green polo shirt had been exchanged for blue pinstripe pajamas that seemed callously ordinary under the circumstances. His eyes were half closed and his glasses were nowhere to be seen, but he still gave a lopsided smile as Ronan limped towards the bed.

Blue lay curled up against Gansey's side, which shouldn't have been a surprise, but it was. Her wheelchair was jammed up against the side of the bed. From the way the hobnail bedspread was rucked up on that side, Ronan figured she had hauled herself out of the chair and into the bed without allowing anyone to help her. Ronan's breath caught when he saw how her hand was splayed on Gansey's chest, resting right over his heart. 

Ronan reached up to his own chest, chasing the memory of the hand that had rested there just a week ago, but there was, of course, nothing there. He took in and released a harsh breath and dropped the memory along with his hand.

Blue's eyes flicked open at the sound, and he caught the anxious, questioning look in them. 

Ronan gave one sharp shake of his head. He wasn't going to ask her to leave so he could have this time alone with Gansey, even though he very much wanted to do just that. Gansey had been _his_ , first.

"Hey," Gansey said. He raised a fist, and Ronan carefully bumped it with his own. 

Ronan didn't say anything, because he had no idea what to say. He just sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to Gansey to feel the warmth of his body.

He wondered, fleetingly, if it would stay warm, or - 

He shoved that particular thought very far aside.

"Sorry for earlier, that you had to see... you know. All that," Gansey said, waving a shaky hand over where the wound had appeared. His words slurred a little, and his eyes were unfocused more than could be explained by his nearsightedness. Ronan leaned forward to pick up the half-empty mug of tea on Gansey's nightstand. He gave it a skeptical sniff. It was spicy and smelled a little bit like licorice, but with an acrid green note to it that made Ronan's eyes water. There was no way in hell he was going to risk tasting the stuff. He put it down as if it might explode if jostled.

"Do I even want to know what's in this?"

Blue muttered something that sounded like 'hell, no.' 

Gansey shrugged. "Probably not. But I can't feel the wound and things don't ache any more, so that's good. The trouble is, I'm not sure I'll be able to stay awake until sunset."

This mellow, blissed-out calm wasn't just another one of the masks Gansey put on to keep what he really thought to himself. Not this time. Ronan remembered what Blue had said about the importance of Gansey's state of mind before he succumbed to the wound and died-slash-slept for six weeks. 

Ronan supposed that 'mildly stoned' was preferable to being scared and in pain, but something about it just didn't sit right with him.

He gritted his teeth and reminded himself it wasn't his call to make. 

Or maybe what bothered him was that _everything_ was wrong.

Nothing was the way it should be. Not any more.

And there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

"Matthew said you were asking for me."

Gansey slid his hand forward to where Ronan's hand was resting on the bedspread. Ronan automatically turned his hand over and clasped Gansey's in his own.

"I needed to see you," Gansey said. He struggled to keep his eyes open. Ronan gave his hand a little squeeze to tell him to try to stay awake just a little bit longer. "You know. Before."

 _I needed to know that you'll be okay when I'm gone,_ he didn't say.

"I already told you I'll keep an eye on things," Ronan snapped. He would. And he'd try to figure out what the fuck to do to fix things so Gansey still had a life to come back to in February. He still had no clue what the hell he would say when Gansey's parents (or worse, _Helen_ ) tried to get hold of him.

"Thank you. Just..." Gansey's fingers flexed weakly in his. "Remember what you promised me this morning."

"Hey... you're the one who needs a reminder. How many times have I got to tell you that I'm not going to do anything stupid before it finally sinks in?"

"Fine, fine," Gansey laughed. "You're not going to do anything stupid. I get it."

It would _not_ be like the last time, Ronan told himself. He knew he had to keep his shit together. He'd figure something out. Some way to get Gansey back sooner. Some way to make things right with Matthew. Some way to get Mom back home.

Hell, he'd even help Blue with whatever she needed, drive her wherever she needed to go, dream her up a rocket-powered eco-friendly wheelchair or some shit like that. She'd be losing someone she loved, and Ronan knew too fucking well what that was like. Yeah, for her it was only temporary, but that was only if Artemus's read on the situation was right - and he'd already gotten some very important shit wrong about Gansey's curse. 

Ronan had a suspicion that the six weeks between now and Imbolc or whatever it was would feel like six fucking years for Blue.

 _At least the maggot had advance warning_ , something vicious rumbled inside him, spitting and sparking angrily. Ronan told the voice to shut up, but it left him feeling agitated and wanting to _do_ something. He tried not to let it show, even though it was physically painful to just sit there and not get up and pace around the room. Gansey didn't need that. Not now. Ronan had promised he would keep his shit together and Gansey needed to see that he could.

The only person Gansey needed to worry about right now was himself.

"I'll be here when you wake up. I'll make sure the runt's here, too."

 _You won't lose anyone else. Not on my watch_ , Ronan didn't say, but he knew Gansey and Blue heard it all the same. For a moment, Adam and Noah's absence weighed heavily on them all, and no one wanted to call any more attention to the fact by breaking the silence.

Gansey squeezed his hand - Ronan barely felt it - and Ronan saw him swallow hard against any more display of emotion that that.

The three of them stayed where they were, none of them talking, as the old wall clock loudly and inexorably ticked off the minutes until sunset. 

At four thirty-nine, Ronan finally stood up and slid his hand from Gansey's. Gansey blinked up at him curiously, but weakly curled his hand into a fist as Ronan reached down to bump knuckles with him one last time.

"See you on the flip side, Gansey."

Ronan waved a deliberately casual salute over his shoulder as he walked out of the bedroom. He did not look back.

He went to the kitchen, sat at his usual spot, and looked out the western window. It would only be a few more minutes at most. The sky had gone heavily overcast while he'd been dreaming, so he couldn't see the sun set, but he kept watch all the same.

Something, he didn't know what, continued to spark and sizzle in the back of his mind. Ronan knew he had missed something important, knew there was some connection he wasn't making, but right now it was just too damned hard to think.

He needed to _do_ something. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to get the fuck out of his own head, and it was hard not to think about the liquor that was stashed in the dining room.

But he'd made a promise. There was nothing he could do but wait and watch.

So that's what he did.

At four forty-five, it began to snow. 

Gansey was gone.

* * *

Ronan wasn't sure what time it was when Maura came into the kitchen and flipped the lights on. The snow was falling even more heavily now, and judging by the _tick-tick-tick_ against the windows, there was some sleet mixed in there as well.

"I know I said not to expect me to cook, but I'm going to heat up some soup for you kids," Maura said. She checked cabinet after cabinet until she found three large earthenware mugs. "Blue already told me she's not hungry, but not eating is _not_ an option tonight."

It was clear that Maura's orders were meant to apply to more than just Blue.

"Where's Matthew?" he asked. Matthew's appetite should have driven him to the kitchen long before now, but Ronan knew too damned well why it hadn't.

"Last I saw him, he was in the living room, helping Blue get settled. Ronan, about Matthew, is he - "

"Hell if I know." Ronan slouched further down in his chair, glaring off into a corner rather than meeting Maura's gaze.

Maura gave a long, considering _hmmmm_ , but dropped the subject. Or maybe she didn't drop it, because the next thing she said was, "Calla should be out here before long." This time, her hum was more fretful than considering. "I hope she'll be okay, driving in this weather. I don't see this ending well..."

Ronan nodded, but didn't say anything. He was thinking back to the talk he'd had with Maura and Artemus that morning, trying and failing to put a name to whatever it was that fizzed and sparked at the back of his mind. Something about souls. Something about Matthew. Something about Noah. Something about sleep and death and dreams. But there was also -

_spark_

It was so easy to believe that Adam was somewhere off to the side, just out of sight, talking quietly and Southern-politely to Maura as she emptied a couple of cans of tomato soup into a saucepan and added a big slug of milk and a chunk of butter. If he turned his head just a little, there'd be that familiar figure right there, leaning against the kitchen counter, ready to be of help.

He'd help with the soup. He'd help with Blue's chair. He'd figure out something about Matthew, about Gansey, about - 

_snap_

Whatever the snapping, sparking thoughts were, they made Adam's absence pull at him that much more. His not being there was deeply, deeply _wrong._

_Adam would know what this was. He'd be able to figure this all out. He'd know what to do._

But Adam wasn't there. Maura only needed to get out three mugs, not four. Or five. It should have been five. 

But Gansey was gone now, too, and the hush of the falling snow and the distant, night-horror ticking of the sleet grew more and more oppressive as evening turned into full night.

Maura sang softly to herself as she waited for the soup to reach a boil. Ronan was just grateful she didn't try to talk to him. The searching, worried glances were bad enough.

No, he was not anywhere close to okay, but that didn't matter. He'd keep his shit together for Gansey, for Matthew, for Blue... He'd find some way to burn off the growing itch ( _spark_ ) to get into a fight ( _snap_ ). Maybe go out to one of the storage barns and smash some useless dream shit into bits ( _crack_ ). 

Yeah, that would do it...

The soup was finally ready. Maura rinsed the mugs out with hot water before filling them.

"You said Blue and Matthew are in the living room, right?" he rasped. He stood up cautiously, already conditioned to expect the jabs of pain the instant he put weight on his feet. He was almost grateful for it, though. It wasn't so much a distraction as a deflection. Physical pain, he knew what to do with. You just sucked it up and endured it until it was gone, and that was all.

"Mmm-hmm. Here you go, hon." Maura ignored how he snarled at the endearment and simply got him situated with the mugs. Ronan didn't mind that holding two of them in one hand scalded the back of his fingers something fierce. It was just another deflection.

Ronan carried the mugs out into the living room. He was in no mood for company, but he had a dark suspicion that Matthew wouldn't eat unless he saw that Ronan was eating, too. Ditto for Blue.

Being responsible fucking _sucked_.

As promised, Matthew was in the living room, sitting on the raised stone hearth and tending to the fire - or maybe just poking at it at random intervals to watch the sparks shoot up. Chainsaw was perched on the mantel, and she shifted into a comically alert pose when Ronan came in, as if to demonstrate that she was taking her job of keeping an eye on Matthew very seriously indeed. 

Ronan had a moment's flare of hope when Matthew looked up and smiled at his approach, but apparently it was little more than instinct, and the smile vanished so fast Ronan thought he might have imagined it.

"Here." Ronan crouched down and put one of the mugs on the stone next to Matthew. "We're supposed to eat. Or something."

This time, the smile was genuine, if faint and a little uncertain. It was something, Ronan supposed. He also realized that he would have to tell Matthew what he had learned - dreamed - the other day, and that he would have to do it sooner rather than later.

"Look. We'll talk more about, uh, _you know_ tomorrow, okay?" Ronan promised. "I'll make us some pancakes or something." Nah, he'd dream them up - easier and less messy. Besides, it was probably the only way he could come up with enough to plug the gaping hole that Matthew's stomach would be after a day of mostly not eating.

Matthew's trust may have been a fragile and fractured thing right then, but the way the tension fell from his shoulders said that maybe not all was lost.

"Okay," Matthew said, and although his response was short, it was not abrupt or sullen, and he made another attempt at a smile. Yeah, he was probably still wigged out about finding out that he was a dream, but Ronan suspected something else was eating at him too. He kept looking out the bay window even though the living room lights reflected off the glass, making it impossible to see outside.

Well, whatever it was, they could talk about it tomorrow. He'd figure it out. He'd make it right.

Ronan headed over the couch. Blue was there, of course, leaning against one arm of the couch with a ratty old afghan pulled over her lap. She looked about as miserable as Ronan had expected.

"Sargent, your mom said you're supposed to eat, and I guess it's my job to be the brute squad or something. Here."

He knew better than to offer her platitudes or sympathy. He held out the mug, and narrowed his eyes when she motioned for him to put it on the coffee table. 

"I _will_ sic your mom on you," he said.

"I promise I'll drink it when it cools. Mom always makes it way too - "

"Ow!" This was from Matthew.

"- hot," Blue finished with a wince. "As in 'shreds of skin hanging from the roof of your mouth' hot."

"Ah." Ronan sat down near the middle of the couch. Blue was tiny enough that she barely took up more than one cushion.

"This sucks," he said. There was no need to explain what 'this' was.

"Yup," Blue agreed.

He blew on the surface of his soup a few times before taking a sip. Yeah, it was scalding hot, but getting something with flavor in his mouth prompted his stomach to remind him that it was feeling pretty empty. Over by the fireplace, Matthew looked caught between ravenously hungry and afraid of his soup. 

"Hey! Matty!" Ronan called towards the fireplace. "If it's too hot for your delicate little mouth, there's some milk in the kitchen."

Matthew grumbled something indistinct and stomped off towards the kitchen.

"I feel so bad for him," Blue said once Matthew was out of earshot. Then, even more quietly: "And for you."

Ronan took another careful sip so he could get away with a grunt by way of response. Even the thought of talking about this poked at something in his mind the way Matthew had been poking at the coals. Dead ash flaring to red heat, then fading back again.

"This wasn't how I imagined it being," she said, when he wouldn't fill the silence.

_snap_

He should leave. Now. Before this turned into a fucking Hallmark sob fest.

He'd wait until Matthew got back (or would go hunt him down if he wasn't back in a minute or two). He and the maggot could look after each other well enough.

Ronan got up, because if he couldn't leave he damn well wasn't just going to sit there like a lump, and went to Matthew's place by the fire. He took the poker and gave the logs a prod. This time, flame shot up along with the sparks.

 _He_ had imagined being home for Christmas for the first time in two years. Yeah, he was home, but Declan was dead. Adam was dead. Gansey may as well be...

_spark_

He gave the fire another prod and took a big mouthful of too-hot soup. 

God. Fucking. Damn it.

This was all fucking _wrong_.

There should have been stockings hanging from the mantel, and a big-ass tree in the bay window. That was what Matthew had been looking at. Not the light-blind windows, but the space where a tree should have been, flickering with soft dream-lights that moved slowly among the branches, and hung with ornaments of all kinds. Ones his father had dreamed. Ones he and his brothers had made when they were impossibly younger. Ones his mother had bought when each of her children was born (or dreamed) or because she thought a glass carrot or a pair of caroling mice or a neon pink bird were too perfect to pass by.

"No shit, Sargent," he said, even though her last comment had been over a minute ago.

"I thought I had time to be prepared or maybe figure out what to do, but now that it's real, now that it's actually happened..."

"It wasn't like you had that much time," Ronan said. "Shit, it was what, barely a week ago?"

Barely a week ago, they still thought Glendower's favor was something worth having. Barely a week ago, he'd gone in search of Adam, not knowing how badly things had gone with Glendower, not knowing what he would find by that pool. Barely a week ago, everything had burned with hope and joy and desire only for every last bit of it to turn to ash.

A harsh breath from Blue knocked Ronan out of his spiraling, snapping thoughts. Or maybe it a word that was bitten back before it could completely escape. Ronan glanced over to see if she was okay, but she looked away quickly, towards the back of the couch and the wall behind it, but not before he saw her face go bright red. She clutched at the crocheted afghan over her legs, knuckles gone white. 

Okay, so he'd hit a sore spot. But that's what they all were these days - sore spots and little else. Blue had only been living with the knowledge of Gansey's death for days, but it probably felt like _months_.

Was that better or worse than having the rug yanked out from under you not just once but twice?

He had no idea.

What would he have done, if he'd had a week's notice that Adam would lose himself just like Persephone? Or if he knew a week ahead of time that Declan was about to cross paths with a petty sociopath with a hate-on for the Lynch family?

Thoughts went _spark_ and _snap_ and _crack_ one after another after another as if he'd finally found the exact spot in the fire to poke dull ash to bright ember and then to flame. 

What would he have done differently if he had known? This thought echoed and sparked, setting fire to another thought, a memory of asking himself the same question just that morning.

_What would he do, if he knew he was going to die? What would he have done, if he'd had warning that Dad was going to die? Could he have changed it?_

He jammed the poker into the fire again.

_Most of our clients say they would want to know if we heard their names, or the name of someone they loved._

Flame followed flame followed flame...

Jesse Dittley's name had been in one of those fucking notebooks Maura was talking about. Ronan had _seen_ those fucking notebooks. 

Name after name of those who were destined to die.

Ronan turned around, poker still in hand, feeling strangely still for all the fires now raging in his head.

"Sargent."

She flinched, but turned to meet his gaze straight on. He wondered what she saw on his face.

He knew what he saw on hers.

Worry. Grief. Fear, slight, but growing. Those were all there, overshadowing them all was _guilt_.

"Ronan? What is it? What's wrong?"

As if she didn't fucking know.

_Blue and I keep watch every year to take down the names of those who will die in the next year._

That weird vigil that Gansey was so excited about. Gansey's voice on that recording. A girl's voice.

Blue's voice.

"You knew about this _way_ the hell longer than just a week ago." It came out quiet, calm, and sharp as a knife.

Blue blinked, puzzled, then it was as if a switch was flipped. She went pale. 

Yeah, she knew what he meant, all right.

"Didn't you?" he snarled, calm disappearing like tinder to the flame. "Don't fucking lie to me. Not now."

He walked slowly away from the fire and towards her. She looked wildly from side to side before gathering her temper and her wits about her.

"It wasn't my place to tell _you_ ," she hissed.

He felt his own anger pulsing in his throat and behind his eyes. "Oh, yeah?" He raised his eyebrows in mock incredulity. "But did you fucking tell _Gansey_? Because I don't think you did."

Her flare of temper was doused all at once and he knew he'd struck true.

_...those who will die in the next year._

"And what about Adam? Huh? Did you fucking tell _him?"_

Her eyes cut away, guilt obvious in the tightening of her mouth.

"You... you _knew_ , and you fucking left him alone in Cabeswater when everything was going to shit? What the fuck, Sargent?"

She sputtered in outrage. "Ronan! What the hell are you talking..." Her eyes widened. "Wait! No! That is _not_ what hap- "

"That's why you felt so guilty about leaving him! Because _you fucking knew_ what was going to happen!"

"No! I didn't!" she shot back, but she was pressing herself back further into the corner of the sofa. "Would you just shut up and listen? Adam _told_ me to leave him! _And_ he told me to tell you -"

"Don't you fucking go there! Adam's fucking _dead_ , and that means you heard his name in that fucking churchyard, didn't you? And what about Declan? Did you - "

She sat bolt upright. "Have you finally lost what's left of your ever-loving mind? Do you think if I knew something was going to happen to your brother I would just sit here and not tell you?"

"Yeah, I do, because you did such a fan-fucking-tastic job telling Gansey!"

"That's different! I didn't tell Gansey because -"

She stopped short as she heard her own admission. Her face went ashy pale as Ronan felt the heat boil up to his own. 

It had been one thing to suspect it, to talk around it, but to _hear_ it...

"Ronan... I swear," Blue whispered. She held up her hands as if to placate him, as if to ward him off. "I _swear_ to you that Adam's name was _not_ on that list."

"DON'T FUCKING LIE TO ME!"

He hurled his mug. Scalding red streaked through the air and spattered over Blue as the mug shattered against the wall. Blue shrieked and covered her head with her arms as the shards peppered her.

"No, no, I'm not, he wasn't, oh God, I swear he wasn't..." she babbled, and the look of sheer terror in her eyes, the way they flicked to the poker he still carried, nearly stopped him.

He swung out, because he had to swing at something. A vase exploded into a million pieces. 

He roared out in grief, in rage, in everything that he'd been trying to keep together for far too long.

The backswing cleared a table of a lamp and a dozen framed pictures. Chainsaw croaked and cawed in alarm.

Maura and Matthew both came running from the kitchen. Maura rushed over to shield Blue while Matthew just stood there, mouth agape. Footsteps and wild, gleeful laughter came up swiftly from behind as Matthew started slowly towards Ronan, hands up and smiling desperately.

 _Shit_. He'd promised... He'd promised he wouldn't...

Ronan went to throw the poker back across the room and get the fuck out of there, he needed to get the fuck out of there, needed to get away, needed to - 

Someone much taller than him grabbed him from behind, hooking his elbows and hauling him back hard. The poker clattered to the floor as Ronan tried to thrash free. He heard low words against one ear, but it was just noise. He had to get out, get out get out... He let his head fall forward then whipped it back, hearing and feeling the _crunch_ of cartilage and an _oof_ of pain. The hold loosened and he slithered free and made for the door.

Out, out, out, he had to get _out_...

"What the hell, Ronan?" Matthew winced as his voice cracked. He tried to go after Ronan, but yelped as Gwenllian swept him off into a swirling, insane dance.

"Oh-ho-ho!" she caroled over Chainsaw's now frantic cawing. "Did none of you see this happening? All the wise men and mirrors and witches and dreams? This one last thing that must happen on the longest night, when so many doors are open?" She spun the two of them right in front of Ronan, before letting Matthew go mid-spin so he stumbled dizzily away.

Gwenllian reached out to Ronan, grinning like a wolf, and he couldn't hear a single thing she was saying over the pounding in his ears. She was _in his way_. He sank back then surged forward, all his weight behind his fist.

He heard Matthew shout something, he couldn't tell what, and then it was Gwenllian who was stumbling to the side and away from Ronan's fist. The punch connected viciously, but not with her. 

The blow took Matthew on the cheekbone with a dull _thud_ , and Ronan felt the sting of cold air on broken skin as Matthew went down hard on one knee. 

Time stopped.

Everything went bright.

He heard Maura yelling angrily at him, heard Blue sobbing in fear. He saw Artemus going over to them, blood streaming down his mouth and chin. He heard Gwenllian's delighted cackle and Chainsaw's worried croaks.

But more than that, more than anything, he saw Matthew staring dully at nothing, stunned, _betrayed_ as his hand slowly lifted to a blood-smudged cheek.

 _No._ Ronan's mouth moved, but he made no sound as he backed away.

He had promised he wouldn't lose it. He was supposed to _fix_ things.

Matthew finally lifted his head, but Ronan couldn't look at him, couldn't stay to see what he'd done, what he'd broken irrevocably. He ran, pushing past a laughing, clapping Gwenllian, throwing open the door, not even slowing when the sleet stung his face. 

What the fuck had happened? What the fuck had he _done?_

He pawed the snow away from the BMW's door handle, whispering prayer after frantic prayer that it was unlocked that please God he had left it unlocked, that the keys were in there like they always were when they left the car at the Barns.

Matthew... Oh, they'd hit each other before, when boxing, but this was different, so, so different. Ronan panted in desperate panic as he stalled the car out once, twice before the engine growled to life.

Matthew's cheek, red from the impact, smudged with blood...

He felt the wheels slip on the snow as he backed out at top speed even as he saw Maura run out onto the porch, waving her arms.

It was the same place the baby's face had been smudged. Exactly the same.

The wipers scraped against snow and sleet but it was enough for him to see, enough for him to get out. He took off down the driveway. If he could get to the highway, it would all be okay. He could drive and drive and drive...

Christ, that look of betrayal, that deadness, like Matthew wasn't even in there. He'd figured it out, he'd finally figured it out. All that shit about souls.

He yelled wordlessly, filling the car with his confusion and grief.

It was the same place where Whelk had bashed Noah's head in. The same place that always looked so smudgy.

Oh, God. He had fucked this up. He had fucked this up so bad. He had promised Gansey, he had promised Matthew...

He swallowed down bile as he remembered that just a second before he had taken that swing, he had been holding a fucking _fireplace poker_ in that hand. And Blue, what the hell must have been going through her head, and how the hell had he forgotten that she had no way of getting out of harm's way?

The car fishtailed as he sped down the driveway.

How was he supposed to make this right? He had to get away, get out, get away...

The visibility was shit, but he knew every turn and dip on the long, twisty drive, he knew where there were ditches, he knew where it would get slick. He didn't know where he would go once he got out on the highway but he would go there fast, fast, _fast._

The snow flared suddenly and blindingly bright, and Ronan instinctively swerved right to avoid the oncoming car (and what the fuck was it doing here?) and that would have been that, but he felt the sickening slide of a car with no hope of traction. 

_Steer into the skid_ he reminded himself with a strange, slow calm, his father's voice echoing in his head. The interior of his car flashed to daylight as the other car skidded past, fast and slow at the same time, missing him by inches.

The BMW was still going fast, still out of control, and he was heading straight for the trees. He could see everything that was going to happen with startling clarity, the huge oak rushing up on his left, but there was nothing he could do until it all ended in a crunch of metal and a flare of white light and pain on the left side of his head.

Next thing he knew, he was stumbling through the woods.

He didn't remember getting out of the car.

He didn't remember _deciding_ to get out of the car.

He stumbled on through the woods. Everything that wasn't throbbing in pain was already numb with cold.

Dimly, he knew he should have stayed by the car, maybe not in it (he smelled gasoline, remembered the arc of a molotov cocktail, a Mitsubishi in flames) but close enough for someone to see him. There had been another car, right? Hadn't there?

It was darker and colder than Satan's heart out in the woods, and he knew he'd hit his head _hard_ \- but impulse continued to drive him out, out, out, away, away, away.

There was something he had to do, something he had to fix, and for some reason he thought he had to be in the woods to do it. 

There was something someone somewhere. Wasn't there? Yes? No? Where? What? A snatch of melody played over and over in his head in between the pulsing pain from where his head had smashed against the driver's side window. Yes, that was what had happened. He remembered that now. He wished that stupid song would stop, but it drove him on, on, on.

The wind rattled through the trees. He thought they were whispering. Whispering in Latin.

_Festinare, festinare, festinare..._

_Hurry up!_

Why? Where? What was he supposed to do?

 _Festinare!_ something shouted over the melody.

Before his mind could pick an answer out of the fog and confusion, he stumbled. He tried to catch himself, but it only made things worse and he found himself flat on his face in the snow. His leg _hurt_.

He knew he had to get up, but he would take a second to rest. Just a second. He closed his eyes. Just a few more minutes, he told himself. Just a few. He was starting to feel comfortably warm, so maybe he should just stay there for a while...

By the time Ronan sluggishly remembered why suddenly feeling warm when it was fucking freezing out was _not_ a good thing, he was sliding inexorably into darkness. 

_Matthew... I'm so sorry._

He slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: (presumably temporary, but no one is entirely sure) character death, violent and irrational behavior that puts two other characters in very real danger of harm, massively self-destructive behavior with nasty consequences. 
> 
> Next: The questions raised in the story summary are finally answered.
> 
> Notes: I'm simplifying somewhat for the sake of narrative brevity, but one of the more paradoxical symptoms of severe hypothermia is suddenly feeling overheated.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan has difficulty remembering. The trees (and others) speak Latin. Power comes at a price.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arrgh... I apologize for the delay in posting and in splitting yet _another_ planned chapter due to length. We are nearing the end, though, and I want to make sure I'm wrapping all of the various loose ends I've created during this story. Also, as a reminder, this story was started before TRK came out, so a couple of characters are quite a bit different in nature here than they were in the novel - I hope that doesn't cause anyone too much consternation.

He slept.

Then - maybe after a minute, maybe after an hour - a dull but persistent throbbing behind his left eye drove away the comforting nothingness. 

Ronan fought against waking, because that's what he did when something scared him: he fought. He fought to keep still, to keep his eyes closed. If he could do that, he would fall back asleep. 

Yes. Sleep. Sleep was good. Sleep without dreaming. Sleep without waking. 

He was just so fucking _tired_ and (his head) everything (his leg) hurt and sleep, sleep was easier than -

Easier than what?

Dread curled in his belly at the question. Something had happened. What the hell had happened? 

Oh... Right.

He had fucked up. _Big time._

Again.

Just like he had promised he wouldn't.

Just like he had known he _would_. 

Because fucking up was what Ronan Lynch did. He'd proved that over and over and over again in all sorts of creative ways and any second now the night terrors would show up to strangle him with his own guts, but no, no, he was awake...

"Fuck." He rolled onto his side, and the dull ache at the side of his head flashed to a spike of searing hot pain. The rest of him hurt, too, with every muscle clenched against the cold. It didn't matter, though.

All that mattered was that Gansey was going to _kill_ him for losing his shit like that with Blue. Hell, Ronan would let him. He had -

What _had_ he done? 

The dull-and-sharp pounding at the side of his head made it fucking impossible to hang on to any one thought before it slipped away again. Impossible to hang on, to hang... Hangover?

Yeah... Hangover. That sounded about right. So he had hit the liquor stash in the dining room after all, no fucking surprise there, because yeah, he was pretty much destined to pile fuck-up on top of fuck-up on top of fuck-up, wasn't he? 

But that wasn't right. He hadn't. Had he? He had promised he would keep his shit together. He had -

He had been... driving? There had been another car. Maybe? He remembered a swoop of headlights and a sickening weightlessness as the BMW lost traction in the swerve. After that he had -

He couldn't remember. 

Not exactly. Not clearly.

But then, right in the midst of all that sleepy muddle, there was one burst of terrifying clarity that shocked him the rest of the way awake:

He needed to get up right fucking _now_.

It was snowing, it was dark, he was somewhere deep in the acres of woods surrounding the Barns (and what the fuck was he _doing_ out there, had he seriously forgotten again?), everything hurt like blazing fuck, and if he didn't get his ass in gear and find help _real fast_ , he was going to freeze to death less than a mile from his own front door.

There was one very small part of him that was tempted to take the easy way out and simply let it happen, but it wasn't just _his_ life on the line. 

Also, he had promised Gansey that no one else would die before Gansey woke up. And that included him, damn it.

"Okay, okay...," he panted. "You can do this, Lynch."

He pushed himself upright but a flash of pain behind his left eye nearly dropped him again. 

_Shit. This isn't any kind of hangover._

He looked up and around him. Then he blinked, as if to clear aside what he saw. It didn't change.

" _Fuck._ "

Yes, he was sitting on his ass in the middle of the woods, but - even though the light stabbed at his brain like a motherfucker - the misty pink and gold along the horizon said it was barely past dawn. His vision was blurry for some reason, but he could see that the forest's undergrowth was misted with new-sprouted green. There was no sign of snow.

He wasn't awake.

This was a dream. 

Which meant that in reality he was still passed out in the middle of the woods at night during a raging snowstorm. 

_Time to wake up, Lynch._

He sat there like a moron for a good five minutes. For some reason, he couldn't remember how to wake himself up.

There had to be some other way... He tried to stand, but a sudden sharpness in his right leg - probably from when he fell - landed him right back on his butt. The pain failed to jolt him awake.

It was right around then that the pounding in his head began slowly fading to background noise, as did the pain in his leg. In fact, everything was starting to feel numb and kind of distant. 

In other words, back in the waking world, his body was becoming too cold to feel much of anything anymore and he wasn't just sleeping.

If he didn't regain consciousness soon, or if someone wasn't lucky enough to find him, he was well and truly fucked.

Which meant _Matthew_ was fucked. Yeah, Blue would know to take him to Cabeswater, but what the hell kind of life would that be, trapped in a magical forest and only halfway present in his own mind?

Besides, Ronan had promised Matthew he would tell him everything. And that meant _everything_ , including what he had finally, horribly figured out about that lost, nearly vanished baby. The smudge on Noah's cheek. On that baby's cheek. The darkening bruise that _he_ had put on Matthew's cheek, that look of stunned betrayal...

A twig snapped behind him, yanking free of that dark spiral of thought. Ronan looked over his shoulder as Orphan Girl sidled out from behind a tree. She walked carefully towards him, but it wasn't with her usual fearful caution. She cocked her head at him in a silent question, as if not certain what he was doing or why. Her skullcap was missing, and her short, fair hair stuck out like dandelion fluff, lofting and fluttering in a breeze that wasn't there.

She was, he now understood, a lost soul, but less damaged and worn than what had been left of Noah. Orphan Girl still had time left, but given how she always looked a little younger each time he saw her, Ronan feared it wasn't very _much_ time.

"I'm sorry," he told her, and he meant it. There were so many things he couldn't fix. All that was left to him were words, and he had never been very good with those. "I should have taken you out of here when I could."

Orphan Girl shook her head and smiled a sweet, sad smile. Any sense of fearful urgency was gone, but it didn't strike him as a permanent change. This was something that was only _here_ and only _now_. She reached out and rested her hand on the side of his head, right over the pounding. It didn't hurt, but he heard and felt the echo of a sudden impact and cracking glass as a memory of blinding light flashed behind his eyes.

_Oh. So that's what happened._

"Oportet festinare," she said. Then, carefully, precisely, in English:

"You must hurry, Ronan." 

Had he ever heard her speak English before? He couldn't remember. There were a lot of things he couldn't remember. But... something in her voice reminded her of something (someone?) just on the edge of memory. 

She drew her hand back from his head, then held it out to him, palm up. Her hand was stained red. Just like those creepy ladies on Mallory's tapestry. Just like Gansey's hand, after the arrow had hit.

"Tempus breve est," she informed him.

"No shit, Sherlock." 

Ronan had no idea how hard he'd smacked his head against the driver's side window when he'd hit the tree, or how long he had been lying there in the cold, but it was pretty damn obvious that time, as she had put it, was pretty fucking short. Then, something occurred to him. It was the first halfway hopeful thought he'd had in too damned long.

"Wait a sec... I know I'm gonna make it to at least thirty or forty, right? I mean, I met my older self in my dream the other night. So, that means I make it out of this alive, right?"

Orphan Girl gave him a pitying look that would have been easier to take if there was even the slightest hint of scorn in there. She touched the back of his hand, marking him with his own blood.

"Non est pignus, promissionis."

The Latin sounded a little off, the way Cabeswater's Latin always did, but he understood her well enough.

_It is a promise, not a guarantee._

Where the hell had he heard that before? It didn't matter: he had broken enough promises in the past twenty-four hours to know what her warning meant.

"Tempus breve est," she said, with much more firmness than before.

"You already said - " He frowned, remembering all that creepy shit Gwenllian had said about it being too late, what his older self had said about there not being enough time. "It's not just me you're talking about, is it?"

She closed her eyes and shook her head. Then, she pointed off to his left towards a slight depression in the ground. Ronan squinted, not sure what he was supposed to be seeing and finding it painful to focus, but then a liquid blankness oozed up swiftly through and over the fallen leaves, turning the depression into a pool like the ones that had taken him across time and through dreams to his other selves.

"Tempus breve est," she said a third time before switching back to English. "Time. Three times. Hold on to that and hold it _tight_. Now listen, while I can still speak to you as _myself_ , while the doors are still open on this longest night, and while you have the strength that comes from walking the border. Remember, and _hold tight_." 

She bent down, brushed a moth-light kiss against his forehead, and slipped a stiff bit of cardstock into his hand. Then she turned and hurried off into the woods before he could tell her to wait.

"Tenere stricta!" she sang out when she was just out of sight and barely within earshot. He thought he recognized the snatch of melody.

He glared at her - what was _with_ that damned song? - then looked at the thing she had given him. 

He bit back a cry of anguish. It was a tarot card, but not just any tarot card. 

It was the Magician from Adam's deck. It even had the ancient coffee stain on one corner that had been there long before Adam inherited the deck.

It wasn't a dream. It was a memory.

Ronan clutched the card tight enough to bend it. He looked over at the pool, blinking hot tears from his eyes.

 _Adam_.

He was too afraid to think about what the card promised (only a promise, not a guarantee), but it was impossible not to hope.

Ronan stood up slowly. His balance was off, and it was more than just the injury to his leg. Once he was as steady as he was going to get, he slipped Adam's card into his back pocket. He knew what he had to do. He staggered forward.

The first time he had fallen into one of these strange, blank pools, he had tried to stomp it to mud in a fit of rage and grief. The second time, he had tried to scramble away in sheer terror. Each time, though, the pool had taken him somewhere he needed to be. There was no reason to think this time would be any different.

So, for his third time (three times - how fucking appropriate) he limped straight up to the pool and didn't even pause before jumping in.

* * *

Ronan woke from one dream into another with a surprisingly pleasant jolt. It felt like mid-summer, nothing hurt even though the freaky numbness was gone, and he was able to get to his feet with no problem at all. He lifted a hand to the side of his head and felt nothing wrong - no swelling, no blood, no pain. His vision was clear and it was strikingly easier to _think_ than it had been. 

The sudden absence of pain and fog made him feel a little high for a moment, but it also told just how badly he had been injured, and the high vanished before he had a chance to enjoy it. 

Even if someone found him in time, he wondered, would he even be _able_ to wake up?

Ronan shook his head sharply, shoving aside that line of thought. There was something he had to do, and little time in which to do it. He took stock of his surroundings, looking for anything that might tell him what to do next. All he knew was that he was supposed to remember something and hold tight.

A forest of massive, ancient trees spread out in all directions as far as he could see. These weren't the usual spreading oaks and slender pines he was used to. These trees grew straight and tall like the pillars of a cathedral, their lowest branches so far overhead he couldn't even begin to guess how high they were. And when they did branch, they covered the sky completely with layer upon layer of the darkest green. 

What little sunlight made it through that dense canopy was so murky and thick it was like being at the bottom of a lake. The forest floor was covered with broad swaths of moss and ferns that came up to his shoulders, and the air was so thick and humid, he could _taste_ the greenness of the place. 

All around him, the buzz of a million insects rose and fell in the still, summer air. There was no sound or sign of anything like a bird, but he thought he heard the whisper of leaves high overhead even though there was no breeze down where he was. There were no leaves down on the forest floor, and no plants other than the ferns and the moss.

The first time he had fallen from a dream into this _deeper_ kind of dream, it had felt like a good dream, sweet and innocent. The second time, everything had been balanced on a razor's edge.

This time he felt small and lost and far too young for whatever this was. The only clues he had were Orphan Girl's scant instructions and the tarot card she had given him. Adam's card. The card from Adam's deck. The card that _meant_ Adam.

Not that he knew what to fucking _do_ with that knowledge. Clear, step-by-step directions would have been nice, but everyone in magic-land but him seemed to be allergic to them.

The only thing that resembled any kind of helpful signpost was a single thin, clear shaft of sunlight far off in the forest. It was the only break in the canopy that he could see. Not knowing what else to do, Ronan struck off in that direction, darkly grateful that his feet and his leg no longer hurt and that his brain could reliably keep track of things like _up_ and _down_ again. Not having a blinding headache was nice, too.

How much time did he have left, though? How much time did _Matthew_ have? Would Matthew hang on for a few days like Mom had before falling asleep? Talk about one lousy Christmas gift... Would Matthew even have time to figure out he was doomed, or would he just go to sleep and not know he would never wake up again?

Ronan scrubbed away an angry tear with the heel of his hand. Unless he figured something out fast, Matthew's last memory of him - maybe his last memory ever - would be the blow that echoed another, far more fatal betrayal.

He walked faster, wishing he had some way to measure just how screwed he was. 

Just then, he spotted a glint of gold snagged deep in a fern, like a bit of stray sunlight trapped in the watery dark of the forest. He barely paused at first, not wanting to lose any time, but then he thought it might be a clue of some kind. He stopped, went back, and pushed aside the springy fronds to see what it was. 

It was a rather nice wristwatch. Specifically, it was _Gansey's_ rather nice wristwatch, perfect in every detail right down to the scratch on the band from the last time he'd attempted to nurse the Pig through one of its many breakdowns. Both hands overlapped perfectly, pointing straight at the **XII**.

Was this his own memory, or was it Gansey's? Was this supposed to be some sort of hint about what he was supposed to do? Did it mean that Gansey was _here?_

Ronan's hands shook as he studied the watch, turning it this way and that, as if maybe there would be a helpful inscription on the back spelling out exactly what he was supposed to do next. When he turned it right way up again, he saw the hands had moved, and were now separated by a few degrees. He shrugged it off at first - he'd been standing there for a minute, so of course the hands had moved - but then he took another look.

The minute hand had moved one minute clockwise, as minute hands do. The hour hand had moved one minute _counter_ -clockwise. 

"Huh."

Well, he had wished he had some way to measure how screwed he was, and now he had it. In the logic of a dream, it made perfect sense that once both hands made it down to the **VI** it was _Game Over, Thanks For Playing_.

Ronan gritted his teeth and clumsily fastened the watch over the leather bands on his left wrist. Less than half an hour left, and still no clue what the fuck he was supposed to do. Great.

He set off again towards the shaft of light, crashing through the ferns. He picked up the pace, but the light wasn't getting any closer, no matter how fast he walked. There had to be _something_ else he could do.

He bent his mind towards _Adam_ , towards _Gansey_ , towards _Mom_ , hoping that would bring him to one of them or vice versa. They were lost on the ley line, weren't they? Maybe? He had found Noah (and that baby _had_ been Noah, he was sure of it now, as sure as anything) in a deep dream like this one, so...

But he had only encountered Adam twice since Adam had d... since Adam got himself lost. Yeah, he'd _seen_ or thought he'd seen Adam more than that, but there was a difference between dreaming and wishing. Twice, though, twice Adam had been _right there_. And it had felt _real_.

Maybe, maybe, _maybe_ this was his chance to free Mom, to wake Gansey, to bring back Adam. He was supposed to have some affinity towards the lost and the dead, right?

So where the hell were they? They had to be here somewhere, right?

He scowled, then stopped and cupped his hands around his mouth.

 _"Mom!"_ He took a deep breath, then shouted again, as loud as he could. _"Gansey! Adam!"_

Nothing. Just the buzz of insects and the whisper of leaves.

He walked a little further and tried again. Then he tried a third time, because this sort of shit needed to happen in threes, right?

Nothing.

But then, when he had found Noah he hadn't been looking. He hadn't even known to look.

He kept walking. What the hell else was there to do?

The ferns were even larger now, the drooping fronds brushing the top of his head as he walked past. He listened carefully for the sound of a familiar voice, but the only sounds other than his own footsteps were the rustle of leaves and ferns and the constant buzz of unseen insects. The sounds of the forest hinted at layers of intertwining words, always in Latin - _festinare... tenere... pro nobis... memoriam... festinare... tenere... memoriam pro nobis... memoriam... memoriam..._

"Remember _what_ for you? And I already got the memo about hurrying, okay?" he snapped. "And why the fuck can't you speak English for a fucking change?" 

Of course there was no answer.

He kept walking. And walking. The ferns grew as large as trees, the trees grew as large as mountains, and the light grew no closer. Shadows with nothing to cast them flitted in the dark spaces between the trees.

Ronan took a nervous, sideways glance at the watch, as if getting caught looking would cause it to jump forwards. He would have guessed that he'd used up nearly fifteen minutes, but the watch hands hadn't even reached the **I** and **XI**. So, that was something, but even at that rate, would he reach the light in time?

All at once, he understood it was impossible. 

In the logic of this deep dream, he could walk forever and never reach it. And why the hell had he assumed that he should even head towards the light in the first place? And wasn't 'heading towards the light' a fucking stupid thing to do when you were on the brink of death? There must have been something else he should have done, but like a dumbass, he had missed it. 

In the absence of anything else to lash out at, he ripped fronds out of each fern he passed.

He clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. This was just a fucking waste, all he was doing was just dragging things out until he eventually died of exposure like the stupid fuck he was. He'd die, and then everything that was him would be fucking stuck here in the dream world, trapped on the ley line and becoming less and less and less and growing younger and more useless and more piss-scared until he finally flickered into nothingness.

_tck_

Or until a night horror tore him to bits. Whichever came first.

"Figures," he muttered. He held his breath, listening for more of the tell-tale ticking, but he couldn't hear anything over the buzz of the insects and the whisper of the leaves. He waited, counting heartbeats, and wondered if maybe his imagination had been playing tricks on him. 

It hadn't.

The night horrors rushed him at once from every direction and from within every shadow, surging out of the forest all around him. There was nowhere to run, and their _tck-tck-tck-tck-tck_ rattled out like gunshots, sending him sprawling.

_No! Not like this! Not when I don't even know what I'm supposed to do!_

They flowed towards him, beaks clattering, talons eagerly extended for the kill.

_This isn't fair!_

Anger burned through fear, burned through thought, burned through reason until all he could see was that light that was too fucking far away and until all he wanted was for these assholes to _burn_ and until all he had left was instinct.

Just as the horrors were on him, he bared his teeth and he grabbed on to the one thing he knew would destroy them - pure, burning daylight - and he threw it at them with all his anger and all his strength.

All of the night horrors simply froze in place, mid-swoop and mid-slash, one with its talons just about to pierce his belly. He could feel the prickle of it. He watched light bloom at their very hearts as they hung in the air. It blazed for a moment and then it devoured them. One blink, and it was over. They were gone.

Glowing ash drifted over and around Ronan like snow, darkening from red to black as it disappeared amidst the ferns and the moss. He got to his feet, shivering despite the midsummer heat, arms wrapped around himself as he took in fast, shallow breaths and tried to figure out what the flaming fuck had just happened and why he was still alive.

His older self had done something like this, but Ronan knew damn well he didn't have that kind of strength.

Except, apparently he did. He'd been able to grab on to that light (was that what Orphan Girl meant by 'hold on'?), and use it to destroy scores of night horrors at once. That was, well... _wow_. 

Ronan grinned, pleased with himself and even more pleased that the shaft of light now looked like it was maybe fifty yards away, tops. Things were finally going his way.

Of course, that's when he backhanded the clammy sweat from his forehead and got a glimpse of Gansey's watch.

_What the fuck?_

The hands were now barely north of the **IX** and **III** even though he would have sworn the whole night horror thing took maybe a minute, if that. 

He stared at the watch in disbelief for a moment before he figured it out. The watch wasn't keeping track of how much time he had left. It was keeping track of how much life he had left.

"Great." Nothing to do about that now except keep on towards the light, and man, did he wish he hadn't had that thought about 'heading towards the light.' 

He mulled things over as he walked, but he couldn't get any of it to make sense. He had just done something in his dreams he never could have pulled off when healthy, so why the hell could he do it when he was on the verge of... _oh._

His memory supplied the answer, neat as you please.

_...while you have the strength that comes from walking the border._

And:

_You work with dreams, with sleep, and sleep is the brother to death._

That's why he was able to pull it off. He had that power _because_ he was caught on the border of sleep and death. All the stuff that happened with his older self that seemed weird at the time now made complete, horrible sense. The desperate insistence that they didn't have time. The raw power his older self had wielded. The way he had clutched his arm (his _left_ arm) and gone gray after the ley line had bucked. 

Ronan let out a grim bark of laughter. Hadn't he told Gansey he thought that anchoring the line had damn near killed his older self?

His stomach churned at the idea that maybe he should've left off the 'damn near.'

With that cheerful and uplifting thought in mind, he walked for what felt like another ten minutes, but the light didn't grow any closer. The good news was, the watch hands moved maybe half a minute during that time.

Ronan stopped walking. Walking wasn't getting him anywhere, but... now he knew there was something that would. He took a deep breath in through his nose then let it hiss back out through his teeth, scowling at that fucking always-just-over-there light. 

He checked the watch - the hands made a perfectly straight line from the **IX** to the **III** \- and then he reached out towards the light, closed his fist around it, and pulled.

There was an impression of immeasurable speed and impossible distance, and then he was standing at the edge of a clearing deep in the deepest part of Cabeswater. 

It was a wide, shallow bowl of earth that was green not with grass, but with something that looked like moss grown large. In the very center of the bowl was a house-sized boulder, a rough and skewed block of granite that tilted away from him. He could tell from the shadows that the side of the rock facing away from him was in full sun. 

A narrow dirt track in the ankle-deep moss led down and around towards the sunlit side of the rock, making it clear where he was supposed to go.

Ronan checked the watch - he had lost two minutes - and left the shelter of the tree line, following the path down and around into the shallow valley. The air changed the instant he left the forest. In the forest, the air was still, but it smelled and tasted of dark earth and growing things. Here, the air was thin, as if he were high up on a mountaintop rather than in a valley surrounded by trees that rose a mile up into clear and blinding blueness. This air tasted of thunderheads even though there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

He had no idea what to expect, but he knew it would be _big_.

As the path drifted closer to the center of the valley, he began to make out signs and sigils carved into the rock.

The triple spirals and circular knots were familiar enough given his father's love of all things Celtic, but these were simpler and cruder than what he recalled. There were strange half-moons as well, cut through and underscored with lines and curves. Some figures suggested animals, many of which he couldn't recognize, others of which may have been animal heads on crouching human bodies. 

Not once did he see anything that looked like writing. Whatever this place was, it was much older than written language. But at the same time, the symbols - and the rock itself - seemed far younger than this valley and the forest surrounding it. Back in the forest, insects were the only non-plant life to be found. And the valley... 

He had never seen moss grow like this. It wasn't just a carpet of green fluff. It stuck up like new pine growth and it reached halfway to his knee now that he was halfway down into the valley. Some stems sent up strange tendrils that reminded him of flowers but were clearly _not_ flowers. He only recognized it as moss because of the smell. It smelled like Cabeswater at its most essential. It reminded him of Adam.

He reached back to make sure that the card was still in his back pocket. It was. 

He continued down the path until he was in front of the stone. The lower face of the rock slanted in and away from him, making an overhang about five feet above his reach. The angle of the sun was such that the ground in front of the rock was in deep shadow, impossibly dark in contrast to the brightness of the sun, and darker yet in one spot at the very base, hinting at a passage going deep underground.

He looked up to the top of the rock and had to shade his eyes, it was so bright. The top of the rock was slanted towards him and took the full brunt of the sun. 

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they did, he saw three crude bird shapes painted in the most basic of pigments - charcoal black, chalk white, and rust red. The figures were placed between deep cracks that crisscrossed the rock. Vines grew through the cracks, holding someone in place on what he now recognized as a sort of altar. Ronan knew who it was at once.

"What the fuck? Gansey?!"

He looked just like he had the last time Ronan had seen him, right down to those stupid pinstripe pajamas. At first, it looked like he had been laid out like a corpse, but his head had rolled to the side, and one hand had slid down from being neatly folded over his chest, as if he had relaxed since being placed there. He looked ruddier and fresher than a corpse, but Ronan couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. He also couldn't tell if that patch of darkness on his side was the shadow of a vine or blood from his mortal wound.

"Gansey! You awake up there?" 

No answer. Gansey kept on sleeping or being dead or whatever it was, but at least Ronan now had something to do other than slog through primeval Cabeswater.

He stepped back, trying to see if there was a way to get up onto the rock and reach Gansey, but the granite was just too sheer all the way around, and the edge of the overhang was too high for him to grab even with a running jump. He bit his lips together and glared at the edge.

"Fine. Time for plan B, you asshole piece of rock. Try _this_ on for size!"

Ronan grinned. Yeah, he was dying, but there were some awesome perks that came with that. He reached up, grabbed at what he could see of the edge, and _pulled_.

The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back on that weird moss with the wind knocked out of him. He checked the watch and saw that he had lost two minutes.

"Okay," he wheezed. "So you're not supposed to fuck with the rock. Good to know."

When he got back off his ass, he peered into the dark at the base of the rock and that suggestion of a crevasse going deep underground. Maybe there was a passage that went up inside the rock? He glanced up again, this time looking for anything that might be a Ronan-sized opening. The size and distance made it hard to tell, but... maybe?

Then, the surrounding forest roared as if in a gale. He looked back at the forest, but the trees were as still as they had ever been. 

"Huh." He waited for a moment, but nothing.

When he turned back to look down at the shadows again, Adam was standing right in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter, we find out about why the trees speak Latin and why everyone and their goat in this story is obsessed with a certain folk song. Plus, some Pynch moments.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments do my heart so much good.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friends are reunited. Ronan faces his first trial. Harsh words are said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the hideously long time between updates. I have to blame a combination of RL busyness, writer's block, and wanting to make sure I got key parts of this RIGHT (I can only hope I succeeded). Also, this chapter ended up being around 17,000 words, so I'm posting it in three sections throughout the weekend of November 19th as I finish proofing and tweaking each chunk.
> 
> Anyhow, there are some additional warnings for these next few chapters: deliberate emotional cruelty, unintentional (but still extremely triggering) emotional cruelty, body horror and gruesome imagery, and some graphic references to/depictions of physical and psychological child abuse. There's also some deliberate OOC-ness that I hope makes sense in context.
> 
> Latin is largely courtesy of Google Translate, but I tried to cover my butt earlier in the story by saying that Cabeswater's grammar was iffy. Also, as a reminder, this was all plotted out before TRK came out, so this swerves completely away from canon when it comes to Cabeswater, Artemus, Glendower, Orphan Girl, first kisses, etc. Just consider it massively AU after BLLB, I guess?
> 
> Many thanks to my beta/sounding board, aishuu. This work would be much poorer without her cheerleading and honest feedback.

The forest roared a second time. A wailing note of fear swirled beneath the thrashing of leaves, but Ronan did not - could not - turn away.

Adam was _real_ and he was _here_ , hunched over and shivering in the shadow of the overhanging rock. The threadbare tee shirt and painstakingly mended jeans weren't what he had worn on that last trip into Cabeswater, but Adam's skin had the same sickening pallor as when Ronan had found him a week ago. An infinity ago.

Ronan waited for Adam to look up, to see him, to recognize him, but all he did was stare down at his hands (so beautiful, so familiar) as if he'd never seen them before, turning them and flexing them over and over, studying the shape of them, or maybe transfixed by the play of tendon under skin as fingers curled and extended. 

Ronan couldn't stop staring, either. His chest was so tight he thought his ribs would crack.

_Please, please, don't let me be too late. Not again. Not this time. It's not fair..._

It could only have been a couple of seconds since Adam appeared, but Ronan felt like he had been standing there like an idiot for hours before he could finally breathe.

"Adam?" His voice rasped as if he hadn't spoken in years.

Adam's head snapped up at the sound and the forest roared a third time, rising up over Ronan's shout of horror as he stumbled back. There was no sign of recognition - or of anything human at all - in Adam's eyes. There was nothing left but feral terror, but as bad as that was, that wasn't what broke Ronan's heart all over again.

The left side of Adam's otherwise too-pale face was livid with pooled blood, just as it had been when Ronan had rolled him onto his back and shaken him, shouting at him over and over again to wake the fuck up even though he knew it wouldn't do a god damned thing.

Adam flickered out of existence and then back again as if triggered by Ronan's memory. But Adam didn't just vanish, like baby Noah had vanished. Something else surged in to fill the in-between as if pushing Adam aside, something that set the edges of Ronan's mind unraveling if he looked at it directly. 

It was...

_... as large as a planet and as small as an acorn, as hot as a new-forged sword and as cold as the far side of a forgotten moon. It was as loud as pitched battle and as quiet as a word that was still unspoken. It was the stark and melancholy scent of earth after rain and the peaty burn of good whiskey at the back of his throat. It moved infinitely fast and stood perfectly still, and he knew he would remember every bit of it forever even as any memory of it refused to take hold in his mind, and..._

...he had no idea what it was. It was the same as the ever-changing fragment of Cabeswater he had once brought out of a dream in an attempt to wake the sleepers at the Barns, only more vast and more terrible and more real and just plain _more_.

But at the same time it was also Adam, and Ronan had no idea what that meant, or what any of this meant. Finding Adam should have been the best thing in the whole god-damned world, it should have been been fucking _everything_ , but instead the whole world was tilting wildly out from underneath him, leaving him with nothing at all. 

Nothing to hold on to, nothing to hit, nothing to swear at, nothing to _fight_. He could only stand there like a fucking idiot. When he finally got his act together enough to speak again, he didn't even try to steady his voice. Just getting words out in order was miracle enough.

"Adam, it's me. Come on. let's get you and Gansey out of here, okay?"

Not that he had the first fucking clue how he was going to do that. All he knew was that he had to do it fast, and that there was no room left for any more fuck-ups. According to Gansey's watch, he had scarcely ten minutes left, whatever that came out to in the time-to-life conversion ratio. He had no idea if it would be enough.

It _had_ to be enough. Orphan Girl wouldn't have sent him here if there wasn't any hope. Would she?

Well, she had made a point of reminding him that promises weren't guarantees.

Ronan clenched his teeth against that particular thought and reached out to Adam. Instead of taking his hand, Adam flinched away as if Ronan had threatened to strike him. Ronan choked back a few choice profanities and kept his hand outstretched in invitation, palm up and as relaxed as he could make it with all the shaking. He did not step any closer even though part of him wanted to just grab on to Adam and never let go. 

Adam flickered away and back a few more times, and for a moment Ronan thought he would run or simply flicker out for good, but then he just shook his head in what looked like panicked confusion, babbling softly and swiftly like a distant stream, clumsy Latin alternating with the breathy sibilance of the trees' language.

_What the fuck?_

"Uh... wanna try that again in English this time, Parrish?" Ronan was holding on to the illusion of composure by a few fraying threads. If he lost it now, he'd never get it back together.

Adam blinked a few times in puzzlement, as if Ronan was the one spewing nonsense.

"Do you even understand a single fucking word I'm saying?"

Silence. More puzzled blinking.

Apparently not, then. Great.

Ronan took a deep, shuddering breath. He would find a way to make this work. Latin... Yeah, he could do Latin. The trees' language might have to wait another couple of decades, if his older self was anything to go by.

"Ego est. Ronan est," Ronan said with deliberate and simple precision as he dared a careful step forwards. Adam did not move, but he tensed in a way that said he would bolt in an instant if Ronan so much as looked at him funny. "Tu me intelligere? Ego sum, qui memini te?"

_It's me. It's Ronan. Do you understand me? Do you remember who I am?_

Orphan Girl had told him to remember. So had his older self. The forest had told him it had forgotten, and that _he_ needed to remember. So that's what this was? He was supposed to remember _for_ Adam? Or for Cabeswater? And remember what, exactly?

"Adam nomen tuum. Tu memento?"

_Your name is Adam. Do you remember?_

Ronan thought he saw a spark of something behind the wild fear, but then Adam drew back, arms wrapped tight around himself, and frowned at him suspiciously. Another rapid stream of mixed Latin and tree-speech lashed out at him between flickers. Ronan clenched his teeth and willed away a surge of nausea - the rhythm and cadence of Adam's word salad sounded far too much like Gwenllian at her craziest. 

What the hell had Adam _done_ to himself back in Cabeswater? 

Well, for one thing, Ronan thought grimly, his older self had said Adam's 'stupid stunt' had knocked the ley line loose from time. Ronan remembered what it was like to be whipsawed back and forth through the eons by the line while he and his older self worked to anchor it, but that had only been for a few minutes as he had experienced it. 

What must it have been like to be smack at the center of that when it blew up across every moment across all of history? Shit... no wonder Adam had gone as nutty as Gwenllian.

Ronan swallowed back bile. How the hell was he supposed to fix this? Was Adam even _Adam_ any more?

He was. He _had_ to be. Anything else was unacceptable.

"Tu es Magus," Ronan said softly, as if soothing a skittish foal. He eased a careful half-step closer.

_You are the Magician._

Adam's brows drew together and the wildness in his eyes slowly shifted to something more like curiosity. Curiosity, and maybe, just maybe, comprehension. He stood straighter and spoke another stream of nonsense, but this time with more Latin and less crazy. Ronan still couldn't understand most of it, but he got enough of it to know he was getting through, that Adam wanted to hear more. Maybe it was just hope-fueled imagination, but he would swear the bruises were fading and color was returning to the dead white of Adam's skin.

"Tu es magus," Ronan said again, watching carefully for any sign of recognition. "Tu es Adam Parrish."

 _You are Adam Parrish_.

What he wanted to say, but didn't trust himself to put words to in any language, whether living, dead, or dreamed, was:

_I love you. Please come back._

He prayed he would be understood all the same.

"Sum magus..." Adam whispered. His arms fell back to his sides and his eyes focused on nothing. His brows then drew together as his gaze turned inward the way it always did when he was turning something over in his mind, and Ronan wanted to weep at how familiar and how _Adam_ it was. 

Finally, Adam looked outward again, looked at Ronan, truly _looked_ , and his face began to brighten with understanding and the beginnings of a smile. "Sum - _AH!"_

Without warning, Adam flickered back and forth between human and _other_ so violently that Ronan startled back and landed on his ass. 

The forest roared. Adam threw his head back and screamed in pain. Ronan could not tell one sound from the other, or even if they were two different sounds at all.

There was no thought, only action. Ronan surged to his feet and flung his arms around Adam. The screaming stopped but Adam remained. The terrible _otherness_ did not return.

There was only Adam, warm and solid and _alive_ in his arms. Ronan pressed his face into Adam's hair and breathed in the scent of moss and motor oil and _Adam_. Even if it was only for this handful of seconds, everything was okay again. He felt Adam raise one arm to rest a hand lightly against the small of his back. The motion was tentative and jerkily hesitant, as if Adam was trying to remember how these things worked.

"I've got you, I've got you. I found you." Ronan laughed, and it was shaky enough to sound like a sob, but he didn't give a flying fuck about that. Adam was in his arms once again and nothing would make him let go. "Please tell me you remember me, you shithead. Please. _Please."_

Ronan drew back just enough to rest a hand on Adam's shoulder and look him in the eyes. His throat tightened with hope as he saw the slow but unmistakable return of understanding. Something about this felt the way anchoring the ley line had felt.

"Ronan?" Adam said it carefully, as if it was a word that was on the shaky edge of being forgotten, but he finally, _finally_ sounded like _Adam_.

Ronan smiled so wide it hurt. He stroked his thumb along Adam's collarbone, marveling at the miraculous warmth and unmistakable realness of him. "Yeah. That's right. It's me, you magnificent asshole. You got this, Parrish. You're gonna be okay. Now let's figure out how to get you and me and Gansey the hell out of here, and let's go home."

At the sound of Gansey's name, Adam turned sharply to look up at where he was laid out on the rock. He blinked a few times, and the corners of his mouth flicked in a blink-and-you-miss-it frown.

"Hoc est m... this is... mal- malum? Wrong?"

What was with the crappy Latin, anyway? Gwenllian had said something creepy about that, and it nagged at Ronan in a way he wished he could dare to ignore. But at least English was coming back. They could poke at all the whys and wherefores of it once everyone was back in the land of the living.

"No shit, Sherlock. Now let's get that genius brain of yours working on the problem so we can get the fuck out of here and have ourselves a merry Christmas or what-the-fuck ever."

Adam lifted a hand to Ronan's face, fingertips just barely brushing over his cheekbone. Ronan swallowed hard and his grip tightened on Adam's shoulders, but other than that, he forced himself to stand still. 

"Scio te...I - I know you?" Adam's fingers were far more certain than his voice as they traced down to the corner of Ronan's lips and then tantalizingly away to follow the line of his jaw and down his throat to his chest.

"Yeah," Ronan rasped. He slid his hand from Adam's shoulder to curve around the back of Adam's neck and then up and up so that hair twined around fingers. "Yeah, you do."

It all made sense now. He knew how this spell should be broken, this curse lifted, whatever. All those crazy stories Dad would tell. All those sappy Disney flicks they watched growing up. They all said the same thing when it came to how you were meant to break an enchantment as cruel as this one.

You broke them with a kiss.

Ronan leaned in as he pulled Adam towards him. It was as easy as breathing to tilt his head and brush his lips against Adam's. Softly at first, so gentle as to barely count as a kiss, then back again with intent.

Something shifted.

Adam's head snapped back rattlesnake-fast, and he shoved hard against Ronan's chest, nearly breaking his grip.

"What the hell? Are you kiddin' me, Lynch?" 

Ronan was so stunned by Adam sounding like himself again, right down to the Henrietta accent slipping out in anger, that it took him a moment to process what Adam had actually said. And what he did process didn't made no fucking sense at all.

"What? No! I'm not kidding, Parrish! Don't you remember - "

 _About damn time, Lynch._ That's what Adam had said after that first, perfect, and uncomplicated kiss. His Henrietta accent had slipped out then, too, only then it had been as warm and sweet as fine bourbon. This, this was...

Adam laughed. Once. Harsh. "Remember _what_ , exactly?" It was a challenge, and not a playful one.

Ronan stammered at first, cold fear clashing with hot anger. "When... when I kissed you, dumbass! And when you kissed me back!" And all the kisses that had followed.

Adam's eyes narrowed. Contempt thinned his mouth to a slit. "Oh. Right. _That_. You say that like it was actually supposed to _mean_ somethin'," he drawled.

This was neither warm nor sweet. This was bitter, icy venom.

"What the fuck, Parrish?" Ronan gripped Adam's shoulders, fingers digging into bone. He was a hair's breadth from trying to shake some sense back into Adam. Or maybe just throwing up. He'd rather have the wild-eyed gibberish back instead of this shit. "Of course it meant something! I - "

There were so many things he could have said, but the words tumbled and tangled in his head. This would all be so much fucking easier if he could just _hit_ something. But hitting Adam was not an option.

Ronan could only snatch at moments, images, feelings. The soft smile and gentle crinkling around Adam's eyes as he pulled back from their third, fourth, (or was it fifth? Did it even matter?) kiss. Catching Adam looking _back_ at him for the first time at the Barns and the thrill of mingled hope and terror that maybe he could _have_ this. The warmth of Adam's hand on his back and Adam's breath on his neck as Adam held him while he raged and wept about Declan. Adam saying he knew about the rent, but not throwing it back in Ronan's face like Ronan had half-expected he would do.

"Really?" Adam's smile twisted into something wide and cruel, and his sarcasm could have eaten through steel plate. "Is this the part where you tell me that you love me like I'm supposed to believe it?"

"For fuck's sake, Parrish!" Ronan had meant to snarl it out, but his voice wobbled and cracked.

_I do love you. I do. So god-damned much. I said it once before. So why can't I just fucking say it now?_

"You know what, Lynch? I bet you just said that so I'd put out. Huh? Maybe you thought if you said a few sweet nothings to the trailer trash loser with the shitty family, I'd be falling all over myself with gratitude." Adam let out a dry, brittle laugh. "Yeah, between that and the rent, I guess I really owed you, didn't I, Lynch? So, does this make us even, now?"

Ronan could only gape in shock. His hands went slack, nearly sliding from Adam's shoulders. He tried to remember Adam spooning up behind him, hand splayed over Ronan's heart, holding him, anchoring him, but the memory kept slipping from his grasp.

"What? No! That's not... I meant what I said, Adam. All of it. I don't lie," he whispered.

Adam scoffed. "Ohhh... Well now, that right there is one of the biggest ones you've _ever_ told, Mister 'I'm always straight.' Anyone who's been around you long enough to see the kind of shit you pull knows you're not the least bit honest." He laughed again, bitter and derisive. "You're not even honest with yourself, Lynch. You probably think you really _do_ love me."

Ronan had said it first and once the night before they went to Cabeswater, and Ronan had known even then it was one of the truest things he had ever said. He'd said it, and even though he hadn't heard it in reply, the way Adam's eyes had gone dark and mouth had gone soft before leaning down into the gentlest, filthiest kiss imaginable had been a wordless promise. It may not have been love on Adam's part - not yet, not completely - but it had been need, and trust, and want, and hope. It had been answer enough.

Ronan said none of this, but Adam answered as if he had spoken aloud.

"Need?" His harsh, clipped laugh made Ronan sick. "Well, I don't need you _or_ your pity. All I _need_ is to get the hell out of here. That's all I've ever wanted. Why is it so hard for you to get that through your thick skull?"

Yes, Ronan knew that Adam's dreams would take him away from Henrietta, likely very far away, but he'd hoped...

"Besides, why on earth," Adam said, poison dripping from every word, eyes gone flat and cold and a color very far from blue, "would I stick around here for a fuck-up like you? Don't you get it? There is _nothing_ here for me."

It was as if Adam could hear everything Ronan was _not_ saying and turning his words back on him with sharpened edges as only Adam could do.

"Are you _trying_ to piss me off, Parrish?" he snarled. His fingers dug into Adam's shoulders, because it was either that or push him to the ground and storm off, and he was just about ready to do that. Part of him was surprised he hadn't already done so. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

 _Adam is_ real, _I know he's not a dream or a nightmare but this isn't Adam. It can't be._

Still, the venomous words poured out. 

"What's wrong with me is that I put up with you and your bullshit and Gansey and his god-damned condescension and Blue and her hypocritical self-righteousness for too damned long! I don't _need_ you, not any of you! Not Gansey, not Noah, not Blue, and sure as hell not you! I got into Aglionby without your help, and I'll get out of Henrietta without your help and if I never see any of you again, then that's just fine! Gansey can find himself a new charity project to feel superior about, and you can find yourself someone else to be your fucktoy. So let go of me and get the hell out of here, Lynch! I don't _need_ you!"

The only thing that kept Ronan from shoving Adam aside and stalking off was a jolt of pure, molten fury. "Like fuck you don't, Parrish! You're stuck in a fucking magical forest, and a minute ago, you were spitting out gibberish and acting like ten pounds of batshit crazy shoved into a five pound bag!"

Adam shook his head and gave a thin-lipped and too-wide smile that held nothing but derision. He blinked, and for a moment there was something _not right_ about his eyes. Not just that flash of gold he'd seen earlier, but a different wrongness. Something clicked in Ronan's mind. A connection almost made but not quite there. Not yet...

"Yeah, and here come the insults, right on schedule. You're poison, Lynch. Pure poison. Why the hell would I want to be around that?"

Ronan gritted his teeth against an eruption of profanity. He was close, so close to figuring out what was going on here. Adam blinked again, and his eyes went yellow - not a warm yellow, but a flat, cold color that reminded Ronan of _something_.

"Damned if I know, Parrish, because yeah, I can be a real asshole when I want to be." 

He could also be one when he _didn't_ want to be, because if he kept flinging out insults and profanity, other things that he was more desperate to say wouldn't slip out. They'd stay hidden and secret, where they wouldn't hurt him any more than they already did, and where other people couldn't use them against him.

"And I guess you didn't actually need me to keep your father from beating you into a fucking coma or helping you find and keep a place to live, did you? Or need Gansey's help when you were stumbling around DC with all your screws rattling loose in your head? Or need Blue and Noah to keep you from getting lost forever while you were scrying! Which is what ended up happening anyway because of course you had to go do everything on your own, you stupid fucking asshole!" 

He wanted it to be scathing and maybe part of him meant it to fling back some hurt, but it came out as pleading. Didn't Adam remember any of this? Ronan batted aside the part of him that was starting to question if maybe _he_ was remembering things wrong. Oh, Ronan knew Adam hadn't wanted to accept their help - it had damn near killed him that he couldn't get away from the trailer park on his own - but there was no such thing as a one-man army, not really.

Not even if that one man was named Ronan Lynch.

"Well, guess what, Parrish - apparently _I_ need you enough that I damn near killed myself to find you!"

And that was the truth. Not just the absence of a lie, but a solid truth, even though he hadn't known until now that his running away was also a running _to_. He needed Adam in ways he couldn't put words to. It had something to do with looking back to make sure Adam was safe before driving away from the trailer park that last time, with needing Adam's company as much as his help while trying to wake the sleeping animals, with needing the sense of safety Adam provided when Ronan didn't trust himself to dream at Monmouth.

And the need he'd felt after Declan died still scared him so damned much. His grip tightened. 

"And it doesn't matter that you're being a fucking douche right now, I'm not going to - "

Adam spat in his face. It burned. _"Let me go!"_

"Fuck you!" Ronan let go with one hand just long enough to swipe away the caustic spittle. With the other, he gripped hard enough to leave bruises. Part of him protested that he was hurting Adam, but something deeper told him to _hold on_.

Adam twisted and writhed, trying to break free of Ronan's grasp. His eyes flashed yellow again, and Ronan would swear the pupils had turned to slits. "I _said_ , let go of me, Lynch! What ever happened to 'no means no,' huh? Who the hell do you think you are? Kavinsky?"

Ronan went cold with disgust, and his grip loosened enough that Adam would have slithered free if Ronan's fingers hadn't snagged on his shirt collar. At the same time, Adam's eyes flashed again and Ronan knew _exactly_ what was happening here.

He knew how to beat this. 

He knew how to get Adam back.

"You know what? Fuck K, and fuck you for saying I'm anything like that shitbag!" he snarled. If it weren't for the sudden gleam of hope, he would have decked Adam without a single regret. "You know better than that, and you know _me_. And I don't give a shit if you like it or not, I am _not_ letting go of you, no matter what the hell you say to me! I am bringing you _home_."

Ronan's grip on Adam's shoulder grew tighter. If he had to, he'd pull Adam into a bear hug and _really_ hold on, no matter what hateful, venomous things Adam spat at him. This was a test. He remembered their conversation about that stupid song Gwenllian kept playing. He also remembered what Gansey had asked him just that morning, about what he would be willing to do, how far he would be willing to go, to save someone he loved.

Well, what he was willing to do was take whatever shit Adam flung at him and _hold tight_ no matter what. Just like Orphan Girl had told him. Just like in that stupid song that Gwenllian had played over and over again.

Maura had been right - half of her crazy was just her trying to be helpful.

Hell, even his older self had told him to hold on, and Ronan now wondered if he'd been talking about more than just about the ley line.

Adam tried to wrench free once again, so Ronan went straight for the bear hug option, wrapping his arms around Adam's chest so tight he could feel the furrows between his ribs. He tucked his chin over Adam's right shoulder nearly hard enough to choke himself and he tried not to think about wedding rings and the language of trees. Promises weren't guarantees, after all.

"I don't need you," Adam hissed again. "You don't know who I am. You never did. You never could. No one ever could."

"Bullshit," Ronan said simply, quietly. "I know who you are. You're a stubborn pain in the ass who has to do everything his god-damned self, and right now, I am about ready to kick you in the _head_ , you are being such an asshole."

"You know nothing." The words were sibilant despite there not being a single S among them, and Ronan knew that if he looked Adam in the face, those blue eyes would be solid gold with slits for pupils. Snake eyes.

That was the first of Janet's trials in that stupid song, right? The man she loved was turned into a snake. A vile serpent. Cold. Poisonous.

How stupid of him to think it would be something so easy as a literal snake. Literal or not, though, he had to hold on. He had to hold on and not be afraid. And then he would have to do it again.

It had sounded so fucking easy in the song.

He could barely hang on as Adam struck at him over and over again, biting hard with his words.

"You can _do_ nothing. Nothing but fail, over and over and over again. How many people are dead, because you failed them? Your father? Your brother? Kavinsky? _Me?"_

Ronan let out a sound that could have been a sob, could have been a shout. But he held on as tight as ever - not so much to keep hold of Adam as to keep himself from running away. He had heard dream versions of Adam - of Gansey, of Declan, of his father, his mother, Matthew, Kavinsky, _everyone_ \- say these things to him in nightmares, but this was a hundred times worse.

"It was only dumb luck that Gansey and Blue got Matthew free before he burned. It wasn't any thanks to you. But you're going to lose him anyway, aren't you? He _hates_ you now, and he's going to go to sleep forever still hating you, because you failed and you're going to die here, and it's all your own damn fault. And do you think Blue's ever going to forgive you, for what you did to her? Do you think Gansey will, if he ever wakes up? Well, it doesn't matter, because he won't wake up, because of how _you_ fucked things up back in Cabeswater. Trust me. I saw. I saw everything. I _know_."

 _Fear not. Fear not,_ Ronan told himself over and over, as Adam went into a long and mocking diatribe about night horrors and all the reasons they had hated Ronan.

All the reasons _Ronan_ had hated Ronan. Adam was lashing out with the intention to scar. And Ronan knew these words would leave lasting ones. He would hear their echoes for _years_ , if he somehow lived that long.

But he held on. He held on to this hateful version of Adam. The Adam who had lost his shit at Mrs. Gansey's campaign shindig. Who had stolen the Pig to go make a bargain for his own reasons and with little regard for anyone else. Who had rejected hundreds of offers of help with anger and contempt. Who had had it in him to understand what would destroy Greenmantle's reputation past repair and plan it down to the last horrible detail.

But that was _all_ this Adam was, and nothing more. It was both a parody and a ghost of an Adam who had once clung to stubborn and poisonous pride the way Ronan had once been drawn to Kavinsky's unique brand of poison. 

There was nothing of the Magician in this Adam. This was not who Adam had chosen to be.

Adam writhed in Ronan's grasp as he spat out one venomous word after another, but Ronan held on. Not just with his arms, but with his memory. He remembered the Adam who was all the things that this Adam was not. The Adam who had figured out about the rent, but hadn't thrown it back in Ronan's face. The Adam who had been there to repair the ley line when Ronan was running out of hope and was desperate to stop Kavinsky and save Matthew. 

Who had been there with blessed silence and strong arms after Declan had been murdered. 

Who had willingly dug deep into the darkest parts of himself to find a way to stop Greenmantle simply because Ronan had asked him to. 

Who had wept over Persephone's death as if she had been the one who had birthed and raised him.

Who had at first looked like he would refuse when Ronan had invited him for Christmas, but then had stopped, smiled, and said he would like that very much indeed.

Ronan had kissed Adam then. And Adam had kissed Ronan.

This was a thing that was true, this Adam who could love and be loved. And Ronan held on to him as tight as he could.

Adam went limp without warning and would have collapsed if Ronan had not been holding him so tightly. As it was, Ronan had to ease them both down to their knees or else risk them both falling. Adam twisted a bit, but it was only to steady himself, not to try to pull free. They sat that way for a little while, just breathing, Adam's forehead resting heavily on Ronan's shoulder. Once Adam showed signs of coming to, Ronan loosened his arms enough to let him sit up and pull back just a little.

Adam looked up. His eyes were blue again, just as they should be, with no trace of reptile yellow. The crooked smile was a little shaky, but it was the smile Ronan remembered.

"Hey," Ronan said softly. "There you are, dumbass."

"About damn time, Lynch." The words were rough and raspy, and they were hesitant with the effort of remembering, but there was no poison in them. There might have been a trace of a laugh, though.

"Ya think?" Ronan said with his own touch of a wobbly laugh. He moved his left hand to Adam's arm as if to give a reassuring squeeze, but he mostly did it to check Gansey's watch.

The hands were now just barely north of the **VII** and **V** , but that didn't matter.

Well, it did matter, but not as much as other things. Ronan let his hand drift up Adam's arm and over his shoulder. Then, up his neck and tracing his jaw before coming to rest over Adam's cheek. Adam's eyes drifted closed and he leaned into the touch. He shuddered.

"Ronan... all those things I said to you, I - "

"Shut up. It doesn't matter."

"It does. I heard everything I said to you, and I -"

"I thought I told you to shut up, Parrish." He tried and failed to keep it from sounding gentle. "Let's just chalk it up to magical forest fuckery and call it a day. You get a pass on this one."

Adam huffed out a weak laugh. The words started coming more easily the more he spoke. "You've given me a pass on too damned much already. I'm amazed you put up with my shit."

"Whatever. It's all in a day's work, Parrish."

"Ha. Now, there's the Lynch charm I know and love," Adam said dryly. "Good to know _that_ hasn't changed."

Funny, how sarcasm could burn in some cases but feel like a comfortable old shirt in others.

"Aw, you just said you love me. How precious. I think I'm gonna barf." Ronan stood up, helping Adam to his feet without once letting go of him. Letting go wasn't going to happen until they were both back safe in the waking world. He nodded his head towards the rock. "Now let's see what we can do about waking Gansey up and getting the hell out of here."

According to the song Gwenllian had played over and over (and over and over and over...), there was still one more trial before Tam Lin was turned back into a human, but it looked like Ronan had somehow caught a break and skipped trial number two. It was just as well - he barely succeeded at one trial, let alone two. 

(For the first time, it struck him as odd that the Fairport Convention song only had two trials. Shouldn't there have been three? Or did finding Adam in the first place count as a trial? Oh well... gift horses, mouths, and all that. They were going _home_.)

"Gansey? Where is - oh." Before Adam could finish his question, he looked up and saw where Gansey was laid out on the stone, dark vines entangling him and three painted ravens circling him, red, white, and black. Ronan still couldn't tell if he was asleep or dead. _"Oh."_

"Yeah. 'Oh.'" Ronan would have said something else, but Adam had gone still in a way that made it obvious that even though his body wasn't moving, his mind was going a million miles an hour.

"Those shouldn't be there. It's not supposed to be like this," Adam said. It sounded as if his voice was coming from very far away. His head was turned so he was in in profile, but Ronan could see an emptiness in his eyes, the kind of emptiness that came when he scryed. When he spoke again, it again came out as if he was translating as he want. "You stopped the Sleeper. I felt Gansey kill it. I don't understand..." 

Adam walked slowly towards the rock, Ronan shifting to keep an arm around his shoulders as he kept pace with him. Ronan wasn't letting go until they were safely out of there.

"That makes two of us." Ronan shaded his eyes with his free hand and tried to peer into the darkness. He thought he could see traces of a deeper and sinuous darkness in the shadows, twisting like veins. Or vines. He remembered Adam saying that things were wrong, just before he went all snake. "What're you seeing, Parrish? What's wrong with Gansey?"

Adam didn't answer. He led them forwards, taking them beneath the overhang. Even as the rock blocked their view, he kept his gaze fixed in Gansey's direction as if he could still see him just fine.

"Hoc est malum," Adam whispered. Then, he started to say something else, but it came out in tree speech. Barely three words came out before he clapped a hand to his mouth and his eyes went wide. He started to shake.

"Adam... _No._ Come on. We've got to get you out of here." This was _not_ happening. They'd won, and they were going to figure out how to wake up Gansey and they were going to go home, damn it. 

Adam turned towards him so suddenly Ronan nearly lost his grip.

"Placet... no! _Please._ You must let go of me, please, you must leave this place, Ronan!" Adam tried to back away, but only pulled Ronan further into the shadows with him as Ronan got an arm around his waist and twisted his fingers into Adam's shirt. "Placet! Dimmitte m-"

Adam ground his teeth in frustration and shook his head. He tried to push Ronan away, but Ronan was having none of it.

"Parrish..." 

"Ronan, I cannot stop this! It's too big! It will tear you apart! You have to let go! I thought I could stay myself a little longer for you I wanted to be me putabam nos - "

Adam's babbling stopped abruptly and he snapped his mouth shut. He stared at Ronan as if trying to learn him by heart, and his jaw quivered. For one wildly hopeful moment, Ronan thought Adam was fighting off whatever madness had come for him, but then he opened his mouth wide and _screamed._

No. It wasn't a scream, and it didn't just come from Adam's mouth. It came from fucking everywhere.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second trial begins. Ronan sees some familiar faces. Victories are not what they seem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it's been a while since you've checked this story, make sure you've read chapter 14 before reading this one, as I'm posting 14-16 throughout the weekend of Nov. 19th. For general warnings for chapters 14-16, see the notes for chapter 14.

Ronan couldn't even hear his own shout as the whole world exploded into a roar of thrashing branches, howling wind, and cracking rock. He almost let go because the roaring was so loud it fucking _hurt_. Instead, he pressed his face against Adam's shoulder to block his eyes because what he saw undid him a thousand times more than the bone-shaking roar of Cabeswater.

For a single, mind-obliterating moment, he had looked into the heart of Cabeswater itself, Cabeswater once you stripped away irrelevant details like trees and ground and water and sky.

 _Hold me tight and fear not_ was what the song said, but Ronan had never been so fucking terrified in his life. It was like watching the ley line whipsaw through time, but this was every moment all at once, and he was right there in the middle of it, and there was no way his mind could hold on to it all. There wasn't anything to hold on _to_. 

One second, Ronan's arms had been around Adam. The next, they had been around nothing. Or everything.

Adam's poisonous words had been horrible, and yeah, it had felt more like dumb luck than any strength of will that had kept him from losing his shit and striking out or stalking off, but Ronan had at least known what he needed to do to win. Here, Ronan had no idea at all. None.

Hell, he barely even had _himself_. Anything and everything he _was_ felt so small as to be a grain of sand as in all directions for miles and years around him, massive roots dug deep into earth, rock, and time. He was pulled into a million different directions at once as branches spread up and out, sending twigs and runners far, far out across the land and far, far up into the sky, up to clouds, to the moon, and striving upward and onward towards the stars themselves.

It took nearly every bit of strength he had left to hold on, to remember he needed to find Adam, and where was Adam, where was he, where was he in all this everything? 

Ronan tumbled through every moment of Cabeswater's existence, batted this way and that like a mouse at the tender mercies of a cat. Soon, he would be lost forever, devoured by this infinite wildness.

_And they will turn me in your arms into a lion bold._

The second trial. Of course.

There was enough of Ronan left to think that he'd rather deal with poisonous, vicious Adam again. Then, at least, there had been something recognizably _Adam_ in there, no matter how twisted and awful.

"Adam!"

Cabeswater roared around him and through him, and where was Adam?

Ronan held on to nothing but there was no fucking way he'd admit he'd lost. Adam was everywhere and nowhere. So what the fuck was he supposed to hold on to?

A memory. A purpose. That was all there was. So, he held on and called out again.

"Adam!"

Then again, because these things needed to happen in threes.

"ADAM!"

A deep silence, and then:

_yes_

It wasn't much, just an impression. A glimmer of _here_ and _now_ in the midst of everywhen all at once. 

Ronan held on to that 'yes.' Not with hands, because those didn't exactly seem relevant, but with a memory of a familiar voice.

"Where the fuck are you, Parrish?"

_here_

Cabeswater swirled and shifted around him, taking on the guise of a forest again, but it wasn't the ancient one he'd entered after passing out or the familiar procession of birches, oaks, and hickories he knew from waking life. The trees were younger here, but taller, and the deer-like things that moved between them were an order of magnitude larger than anything he'd seen in the Virginia hills. Larger even than the skeleton elk they had seen in the caverns below Cabeswater.

The forest spoke to them. Mostly in its own language, but Ronan thought he caught some fragmented Latin and even some English as well. The deer-things didn't do anything more than twitch their ears at the noise.

"Adam! Where are you!"

He felt a hint of warmth and gentle pressure along his side.

 _here, Ronan_

Ronan kept hold of the sound of Adam's voice speaking his name, and now he held on to the feel of a warm body next to his, the bulk of a sleeping cow behind their backs, and nothing but a few layers of cloth separating them as they sat shoulder to shoulder in the still, dozy air of the Barns.

He held on.

Cabeswater bucked again, this time flinging him to a colder sister forest that felt very far away. Here, bare trees jutted up at strange angles from a frost-covered slope above an open valley. The smell of blood and shit and piss hung heavy in the cold, misty air and Ronan heard the clash of metal and the screams of men and horses from all sides. He looked to his right just in time to see a solid black arrow strike a nearby rider, piercing the heavy chain mail as if it were tissue. It hit just under the rider's ribs, and Ronan froze at the sudden harsh exhale of pain and shock. He had heard its twin just that morning.

The man slid from the saddle. He scrabbled at the pommel, but he could not hold on. The trees cried out in a voice like and unlike Cabeswater's, and above the terrified screams of horses and men Ronan heard a shout of horrified denial as a tall man in plain gray robes rushed to the rider's aid. Ronan recognized this second man immediately.

_Artemus? So the guy who was shot is... fuck!_

Artemus caught Glendower before his head could hit the ground, and although he only saw the king's face for half a second, Ronan would have sworn he looked like Gansey.

Artemus looked out into the forest and snapped out something in what Ronan was pretty sure was Welsh.

The forest didn't understand Artemus any more than Ronan did, but Artemus said what sounded like the same damned thing, only slower and more frustrated. The trees' rustling sounded equally frustrated. 

Then, Artemus muttered something under his breath before looking up into the trees and calling out:

"Adiuvare nos!"

 _Help us,_ Ronan translated automatically.

The trees went quiet. When they spoke again, Ronan was surprised that he could recognize Cabeswater's voice rising over the unfamiliar whispers of this other forest. There was a return rustling, like a flurry of argument, and then both forests spoke as one.

Latin mixed with tree speech in a brief flutter that meant 'yes.'

Ronan was swept away before he could see happened next, but he heard hoof beats and screams as Cabeswater's Welsh sibling loosed its creatures on the English. 

Ronan gritted his teeth and pushed past the distraction and the swell of nausea. He had to _hold on_ , no matter what Cabeswater showed him. And why the fuck did it speak Latin?

"I'm still here, Adam! Are you there?"

He heard the whisper of his name, and he felt the comforting warmth against his side. He held on, and he kept looking. Years and seasons shot back and forth faster than he could track, but in the middle of it all he could see Adam as he once stood both in dreams and reality, repairing the ley line just when Ronan needed it most. He saw the assurance in those blue eyes and the strength in those fine-boned hands, and he held on.

_I'm here, Ronan._

The Adam in Ronan's memory moved a stone just _so_ , and with that, Cabeswater roared and sent him flying once more. When he landed, the forest was again the one he knew from waking life. This time, the red in front of him was not the sickening red of battle but the shiny red of a sports car. 

Two boys stood a short way off from the car. One was dark, the other fair, like two brothers from a fairy tale. Or perhaps like a brother and the brother he had pulled from a dream. But then the dark one crouched down to pick something up, and he swung it hard against the side of the fair one's head and caving in his cheek.

No, they weren't brothers after all, no matter what they had once told themselves. The sound of the blow was duller and wetter than Ronan would have imagined. If he survived this, he would hear it in nightmares for the rest of his life.

Noah fell to the ground like a sack of laundry, but Whelk hit him again and again and again, and all Ronan could do was bite back his tears and hold on. He held on to the sound of his name, to the warmth of Adam next to him, to the image of warm blue eyes and beautiful, clever hands.

"Adam?" he said, voice shaking with rage and sorrow. "Please?"

 _I'm_ here, _Ronan._

Ronan leaned into the warmth that he remembered, and he thought he could smell mist and moss and motor oil and cheap detergent and a deeper note beneath all these familiar things that was distinctly _Adam_.

He held on.

He held on to the sound of Adam's laugh as Ronan dragged him behind the BMW in a dolly. He held on to the feel of an elbow digging into his ribs after Ronan had said something that he _knew_ would get a rise out of Blue. He held on to the sight of sun-freckles disappearing under the collar of a faded red tee-shirt and the way his fingers had twitched with the temptation to reach out and _touch_. He remembered the smell of bitter gas station coffee wafting over from the desk next to his on the mornings after Adam had suffered a late shift at the factory.

He held on even as Cabeswater took him to a cold and foggy morning barely a week ago, to a clearing and a still pool of clear water. 

Ronan knew the place at once.

"No," he whispered as he reached out for a hand that was not there.

Even so, he felt a hint of warmth where there should have been someone beside him. He heard soft breathing and smelled toothpaste and bad coffee and motor oil. He held on to this even as he saw another Adam kneel down by the mirror-smooth water and push up the sleeves of his sweater to keep them from getting wet. A hint of motion and a glimpse of hot pink further along in the forest must have been Blue rushing off to help Ronan and Gansey. The Adam by the pool kept looking in her direction for a good minute after pink vanished into gray, as if waiting to be certain she was well and truly gone before he put his hands to the surface of the water.

_I'm here, Ronan. I'm right here._

Adam lifted his hands and looked down into the water and Ronan was undone. He started forward, but it was only the barest hint of a tug at his hand that stopped him before his fear could make him lose hold of everything he had gathered.

 _Hold tight_.

"I need to stop this!"

_Don't be afraid._

Adam's face went slack. He stayed there, kneeling but with his body still upright as his soul entered the water.

"Adam! For fuck's sake!"

 _I'm_ here, _Ronan._

"I don't - " Ronan blinked back angry tears and swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. "I don't _understand_!"

Adam swayed where he knelt, head lolling and arms hanging loose by his side. For a moment, he seemed to come back to himself, to hold himself strong and upright, but then he just slumped over gracelessly, landing exactly as Ronan found him hours later.

Ronan's cry of grief and rage was swallowed by the roaring of the forest as everything went to hell and Adam and Cabeswater became one.

A being for whom time was fluid collided with one for whom it was not, and it was like the one chemistry lesson Ronan actually remembered, when their teacher had shooed them to the other side of the lab and dropped a lump of cesium into a beaker of water without warning any of them what to expect. The beaker shattered and water and glass went everywhere. The ley line was ripped from its moorings and the shock wave echoed through all times at once.

"If we don't fix this, everything's fucked," Ronan heard himself say from just over his shoulder. "The chaos will spread like rot forwards and backwards in time, and you can kiss causality goodbye if we don't pin it down as close to the break as possible."

Ronan should have been more surprised than he was to find his older self standing behind him. He wore Dad's old coat and had that stupid ponytail just like before, and he tossed a small, white something nervously in one hand. It was a pill. Ronan knew at once it was something that had been dreamed.

"It would have been nice if you'd told me that before," Ronan snarled. "Thanks for nothing, asshole."

His older self winced. "Yeah... Figures we wouldn't get things in the right order, this close to the break." He sighed deeply, then popped the pill he'd been tossing into his mouth and dry-swallowed it with a grimace. 

"Hooray for 'unfortunate side effects,' huh?" he said with a terrible smile. He flicked his hand in something that could have been a salute or could have been a dismissal. "No going back now. Either we fix the thing or we don't. I hope it means something, seeing you here, but promises - "

"- aren't guarantees," Ronan finished, mouth suddenly very dry. He was not going to freak out. He was _not_ "So how the fuck do I get me and Adam out of - oh, come on!"

He was tossed through time once again, and once again, he saw everything.

Glendower's fall. Noah's death. Adam's bargain. He even saw and heard himself angrily telling Cabeswater that letting Gansey die went against Cabeswater's wish to keep the Greywaren, to keep Ronan, safe so it had damned well better keep Gansey safe too. He saw the surprise on his own face when Cabeswater had listened and he felt a new sort of surprise as he began to understand why Cabeswater had always looked after him in its own, broken way, so forgetful of the way humans thought and felt.

"Adam?"

_Yes. I am here. There._

He watched again as Cabeswater sent out tendrils into the other forests that encircled the Earth. Different places, different times. And different people. It tried speaking to them. Tree speech, mostly, but Ronan recognized actual words, both English and Latin, as the forest desperately tried to find someone to understand. 

Then he had to watch the Third Sleeper toss Blue aside again. Ronan watched himself, still in his post-dream paralysis, unable to do a damned thing and believing Blue had just been killed and that he and Gansey would be next.

Another forest, another time. People in ancient dress who were using bronze plumb lines and hazel dowsing rods in an attempt to map the ley line. Ronan watched their nervous glances and tense body language as the trees whispered and rustled around them, but then he saw one gaunt, gray-haired man stand straight as one plaintive whisper was understood.

_Ave?_

"Ave," the man replied cautiously, and the forest exploded in whispers.

Cabeswater - or the part of Cabeswater that had never been meant to be a forest or to live so loosely in time - had been desperate to speak to someone. Now, or maybe two thousand years ago, it said hello, and finally, _finally_ someone said hello back.

"Adam..." He wanted to cry. So many things about Cabeswater were starting to make sense, but he didn't want them to.

_I'm here, Ronan. And I'm sorry._

Before Ronan could say anything, he was back in the Cabeswater he remembered. He saw himself wake too early from his attempt to dream a weapon for Gansey that would end the Sleeper. He watched as Cabeswater roared to life around them and Gansey made a too fast, too desperate bargain with the woken and dying Glendower. He saw Gansey run a half-formed dream sword through the one weak place in the Sleeper's armor and into its heart. He saw Gansey asleep or dead up on that stone, dark vines creeping up through the cracks to wind around him.

_Hoc est malum. This is wrong._

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

He saw Adam again, but this time in a springtime forest and wearing a threadbare tee shirt and mended jeans, It was what he'd been wearing when he'd appeared by the rock. When he'd hurled venomous words at Ronan. This past Adam stood in a protective circle, face stony with stubborn pride. Outside Ronan could see shadows that were himself and Gansey and Blue and Whelk. Adam's voice rang out in two different times, in two different forests.

 _I'm here, Ronan. We have always been here. But we forgot._. 

"I will be your hands. I will be your eyes." 

If only Adam's bargain had ended there. But it hadn't. In the end, Cabeswater had taken everything.

"No! Fuck this! This isn't you!" 

But it was.

_I forgot._

Ronan watched helplessly as the cold and prideful Adam that Cabeswater had first known once again left Whelk to a rough and terminal justice. At the same time, an ancient forest with Adam's soul threaded through it swatted Whelk as if he mattered no more than a mosquito. Or no more than an English army.

Maybe Cabeswater never really knew Adam. Or maybe the ley line ripping loose from time as Adam made a desperate bargain had torn apart everything they both thought they were.

_I forgot who I am._

Well, that just meant it was Ronan's job to remember. To hold on. To bring something human out of this wildness.

So he held on tight.

He held on to the sound of his name in Adam's mouth, the slight twang to it that was now an inextricable _part_ of his name, especially when said so close by that Ronan felt Adam's breath brush gentle and warm against his cheek. He remembered pulling back just enough to see what must have been his own expression mirrored in Adam's eyes, the darkness of arousal and the tension of uncertainty as each of them wondered if this was okay, if this was right, if they would regret this. And at the same time, he remembered the scattering of freckles across Adam's nose and cheeks and the pale scars of hard work on the fine-boned fingers Ronan brought to his lips. 

He remembered pressing his face into the crook of Adam's neck as Adam ran his hands beneath Ronan's shirt and up his back. He remembered the way Adam smelled, the mix of forests and factories, of magic and the mundane.

He remembered the taste of Adam's skin beneath his lips, something that couldn't be described but that he now knew absolutely.

He remembered the slight gasp as he nipped slightly, and the way Adam's hands pressed hard against him - one between his shoulders, one at the small of his back as they stood in Adam's room at St. Agnes. He remembered Adam's legs knocking against his as they stumbled towards Adam's mattress while trying not to break their kiss. He remembered tightening his arms around Adam to keep him from falling as they fell to their knees in the cool, damp moss and the way Adam slid a hand from Ronan's back to splay over his heart as he deepened the kiss, and - 

And Ronan was so lost in the kiss that it took him a few heartbeats to separate out memory from what was happening _now_. He pulled back slowly from the kiss and rested his forehead against Adam's, not daring to open his eyes.

"About damn time, Lynch," Adam whispered, and Ronan felt the damp warmth of Adam's breath against his lips and knew this was no memory.

"You said it, Parrish." He did not let go, but he slid his hands down Adam's arms, feeling the wiry strength beneath the worn sweater, feeling the realness of him. Adam was now in the clothes he had been wearing that last day, and Ronan saw the half-healed scrape on the back of his hand that he'd picked up the day before. Ronan hoped this meant they were done, that Fairport Convention had it right, and these were the only trials before Tam Lin - before Adam - was human again.

Then again, seeing his older self had been a nasty reminder that promises weren't guarantees.

There wasn't a lot of space between them to maneuver, and the angles were awkward, but Adam lifted a hand to Gansey's watch and turned it so that the dial was facing him. He frowned.

"You don't have much time left," he said, voice soft but thick with worry. 

The hands were scarcely two minutes away from either side of the **VI**.

"Hold on. How do you -" Ronan began.

Adam shrugged, eyes still on the watch. "I can see what it is. You've got to _wake up_ , Ronan."

"I don't know how." This clearing among the ancient trees and the rock at its center, felt like the waking world, so what was he supposed to do to get out of it? "And we're not leaving Gansey behind, okay? I'm not leaving here until we figure out how to break that damned curse and take him with us."

Adam stood up and craned his head to look back at the rock and the vines that were wrapped around Gansey. For a moment his shoulders hunched in and he ducked his head as if trying to himself look smaller. He shook it off, though, and stood straight. When he spoke, it was with the kind of authority Ronan was more used to hearing from Gansey.

"No. We can't. Not yet."

"Are you fucking shitting me? What do you mean, 'no'? We are taking him with us. End of story."

Adam grasped Ronan by the chin and held him so he could not turn away. Ronan's hands went slack, and he would have lost hold if Adam had not been holding on to _him_ , one hand secure against his jaw and the other just above Gansey's watch.

"Ronan, you _have to wake up._ "

Adam's eyes were their familiar blue, but they were also more than that. Behind the blue, he could see Cabeswater itself.

"Adam..."

"Yes. It's still me. Even before this, it was always me."

Ronan started to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, but he knew. He'd already figured it out, but now the full meaning of it bore down on him. The final bargain with Cabeswater, the fragmenting across time, the forgetting, the loneliness, the relearning...

Every interaction they'd ever had with Cabeswater, either alone or as a group, took on new meanings that Ronan was not ready to think about. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

No. He had to get away, to get some space, but Adam held him with a light, warm touch and gently stroked his thumbs in slow circles over Ronan's wrist and along his cheek. It reminded him to hold on.

So he did, turning his hand over to clasp Adam's.

And that's when Adam smiled, gentle and nervous and full of hope, and said, "But it's still _me_."

Ronan said nothing. He just squeezed Adam's hand carefully, as if testing its reality.

Yes, there were traces of Cabeswater in Adam's eyes, but they were Adam's eyes. "I'm myself, Ronan. Even though I'm still..." He shook his head, and let out a very _Adam_ huff of frustration. 

Ronan couldn't help letting out a laugh. "Still sorting it out?"

Adam gave him a wry smile. "Something like that, yeah. But I know what went wrong," he said, looking back up at Gansey. "I saw it. Or see it - it's hard to tell. Anyhow, the Sleeper got Blue before she could help you finish dreaming up that sword."

"Tell me something I don't know, Parrish."

Adam sighed. "Wasn't your fault, Lynch. You did what you could."

Right. He supposed he could say the same thing about looking for his dad that one morning. Or going to find Adam after they'd killed the sleeper. He'd done what he could. 

Which was fuck up. Like always.

"Stop that, Lynch."

"What? You know how to read minds now?"

"Nah. I just know how to read you," Adam said with a crooked grin. He patted Ronan on the cheek and laughed as Ronan snapped at his fingers. "Worst poker face ever once you know what to look for. It's not your fault the Sleeper nearly got Blue. Anyway, you saw the darkness beneath the Heart - I mean, beneath the stone?"

Ronan nearly made a crack about how yes, it _was_ dark under giant rocks, go figure, but he remembered the veins of pure darkness running through the shadows and he nodded.

"A small part of the Sleeper survived."

Ronan closed his eyes as he felt something cold and heavy settle in his gut and heard a taunting echo in his mind. He hadn't done a good enough job dreaming that sword. "Yeah. It's like you said before. I fucked things up back then, didn't I?"

Even though Adam had disowned those poisonous words, they still played over and over in Ronan's memory. Just because they were said under a spell or some shit like that didn't mean they weren't true.

"No! That's not - " Adam snarled in frustration, then took a deep breath. "I meant it when I said that a _small_ part survived. It's out there in the waking world. Like a kernel, or a maybe a seed. There's not enough there for it to wake again, but there's enough for it to get in here and do _that_ ," he said with a nod towards Gansey.

"Shit." Ronan glared at the vines, and how one of them was draped across Gansey's neck. "So, do I need to dream us up some Roundup for these things?"

More and more, Ronan was starting to believe they hadn't won much of anything after all. After everything they had lost, they could at least cling to the fact that they had killed off the demon. And now they didn't even have that much?

Adam shook his head. He studied the vines and the rock in way that made Ronan wonder just how much he was seeing and what it meant and just how much of Adam might never again be entirely human.

 _Like me. I'm not alone any more_. The thought came and went before Ronan could examine it closely, but it managed to comfort and deeply rattle him at the same time.

"Not sleep, but his brother, death," Adam said as if reading it from a plaque. He said it in English, not Latin, thank God, but it still made something churn deep in Ronan's gut.

"I think you got that backwards, Parrish."

Adam shook his head. "No. This sleep will eventually kill him instead of restoring him. Him, and Cabeswater along with him."

Which meant that Adam had some skin in this game as well. And that Ronan really had fucked this up big time.

_How many people are dead, because you failed them?_

Ronan would happily drive nails through his own eardrums if it meant he would stop hearing that shit. 

He gritted his teeth and clenched his hands in Adam's sweater, pulling him close so that they were almost nose-to-nose. "If that's the case, then why the fuck can't we take Gansey out of here with us? You still haven't said!"

Ronan had never before seen an eye roll that was equal parts teenage boy and timeless forest. He would have been impressed if he wasn't waiting for a straight answer.

"We can't save him from in here. I told you! You need to _wake up_ , Ronan!"

 _"I don't fucking know how!"_

Adam's eyes went wide, and there was no trace of Cabeswater in them. Something was happening, and it had damned well not be another fucking trial.

Ronan just wanted to go home.

"I - I don't how what I'm supposed to do, Adam! Isn't it all supposed to be better, now? We fucking won! I passed both trials from the stupid song, so why the hell isn't everything better? Blue's broken, Gansey's dying, _I'm_ dying, and you... I don't know _what_ the fuck is going on with you!"

Adam cut his gaze away from Ronan as he seemed to shrink in on himself again, shoulders curling in. Ronan wanted him to stop it, to shake it off like he had before.

"You're the one who has the in with the magic forest, right? You say I'm supposed to wake up so I can go save Gansey, so why don't you tell me how the hell I'm supposed to do that?"

He got a sharp but quiet intake of breath in place of an answer, and Adam froze for a moment as if startled by his own noise.

"Come on, Parrish! What's wrong? We beat the trials, and I got you back. If you want me to say I'm sorry that I yelled at you, then fine, I'm fucking sorry. Okay? Now let's figure out how the fuck to wake me up before I run out of minutes."

Adam was shaking now, still curling in on himself as if to make himself smaller.

"Parrish, what the fuck is... no. No no no-no-no! This is not fucking happening!"

Adam wasn't just trying to make himself smaller. He was actually _becoming_ smaller, the Aglionby sweater fading and shifting beneath Ronan's hands, slowly becoming the worn, dingy gray of a blue tee shirt that had been washed too many times and not often enough.

There were only two trials in the song, right? Janet had held on to the snake and then the lion and then she got a nice armful of naked boyfriend.

But Orphan Girl had said _three times_ and obviously just finding Adam hadn't counted, so Ronan made sure to grab hold good and tight because he had no idea what to expect next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding throwing cesium into water:  
> One, blowing shit up is a great way to get kids interested in science.  
> Two, Ronan's chemistry teacher really should have done that demo outside.  
> Three, don't try this at home (Google "cesium in water" if you want to see some cool 'splosions).


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third trial begins. Past behaviors are explained. Ronan offers a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For general warnings for chapters 14-16, be sure to check the notes for chapter 14.

The version of Tam Lin that Gwenllian had played was only one of many, many versions. 

Most of those versions had three trials. The order was different from song to song, but Ronan remembered that there was always a serpent of some kind and there was always a lion or some other sort of wild beast. But what was the third trial? Ronan snatched wildly at scraps of memory, but surging panic shoved them aside and out of reach. 

He knew what it was. He knew he knew what it was, but he couldn't remember and nothing was making any fucking sense.

Adam kept growing smaller. No, that wasn't it. He was growing _younger_. A lot younger.

Ronan had no fucking clue why or what it meant. Except for the bun in Janet's oven, none of the trials had anything to do with kids.

"Parrish! What the fuck is going on?" 

Just like that, Adam stopped growing younger. How young he was, Ronan couldn't say. Five? Eight? All Ronan could tell was that he definitely wasn't a toddler and definitely wasn't a tween. He was disturbingly small, but his cheeks weren't as rounded as really young kids' were. His hair was lighter than it was at eighteen and it looked even more badly cut than it usually did, flopping down in front of his eyes - not that Ronan could have seen them with the way Adam looked determinedly down and away. Ronan gave Adam a little shake to get his attention.

"Hey! Talk to me, Parrish!"

There was a sharp gasp of fear, and then Adam was wriggling and writhing in his grasp, desperate to wrench free.

"LET GO OF ME!" 

Ronan nearly did. The shrill terror in Adam's voice was like stumbling into a pool of icy water, and if Ronan had been any slower in shaking off the breath-stopping jolt of it, Adam would have slipped loose and Ronan would have lost.

"Not gonna happen," Ronan said calmly, even though his heart was rattling a mile a minute up in his throat.

"Let me go, let me go, please, let me go, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry_..." Adam sobbed. Instead of blasting Ronan's eardrums with its shrillness, this cry was barely audible. Adam kept trying to pull away, but there wasn't much heart left in it.

Ronan closed his eyes and swallowed hard, trying and failing to shut out Adam's sobs. This was worse than Matthew asking why Ronan never told him he wasn't real, worse than the stunned look on Matthew's face after Ronan hit him, so much worse. But if he could just hang on, if he could suck it up just a little bit longer, he'd be through all three trials and this would finally be _over_. 

Then maybe, just maybe, if he had enough life and enough luck left, they could go _home_. Both of them. Together. And they'd find a way to wake Gansey, and everything would be okay again.

"Listen," he said, and he knew it sounded more gruff than he meant, but there was nothing he could do about it. "I know you're scared shitless right now, but this is for your own good, okay?"

With that, Adam stopped struggling and went slack. Ronan tightened his grip on Adam's arms, partly to keep him from falling, but also figuring that the abrupt limpness was a ploy to get him to let down his guard. Young didn't mean stupid, and this was _Adam Parrish_.

He startled when the tip of of his thumb slid over the nail of his middle finger. Adam's arms were just that thin.

"Christ," he half-laughed, "don't they - "

He stopped himself before he could say any more. 

_Don't they feed you enough._ The answer to that was nauseatingly obvious, and Ronan's throat tightened as he remembered a million arguments about money and all those times he'd openly sneered at things like half a loaf of bread in Adam's apartment - usually shitty store-brand white with an orange MANAGER'S SPECIAL sticker on it which meant it had hit its expiration date. Or all the times when Adam would glance at the pizza crusts Gansey invariably left behind at Nino's, never saying a damned thing, but always looking, always judging. And then there were his own snide remarks about how Adam was the only person who liked the Aglionby lunches enough to ever take second helpings of the so-called chili or what Ronan had gleefully dubbed Turkey Tetrachloride.

What killed him was that for all the cutting remarks Adam made about money, Ronan wasn't sure he could remember any complaints about being hungry. Like it was something there was no point even thinking about because it was just how things were. How they'd always been.

If he and Adam ever managed to get out of this, Ronan was going to dream him up a steak dinner every damned night.

Adam remained still, as if waiting for something, but there was something off about the stillness that Ronan couldn't quite figure out.

Ronan waited, wondering what was going to happen next. Another burst of nonsense? Another transformation into something other than human? More of that delightful verbal abuse?

None of that happened. Instead, Adam risked a furtive glance up at Ronan, so quick that Ronan barely caught the flash of a blue eye and a darkened cheek (and for a moment, he was back by the pool in Cabeswater, turning Adam over onto his back and seeing the dark patches that told him he was not just too late but far too late). But this was just an ordinary bruise. Ronan had gotten just as bad, if not worse, from his scraps with Declan.

"Adam?"

There was a quick intake of breath, like a sob cut short, but Adam just stood there. Waiting. 

Not just waiting. _Resigned_.

Ronan rolled back the past few minutes in his head, trying to figure out what was going on or what he'd done to change things. When it hit him, he collapsed, falling hard to his knees. His grip on Adam went slack as he nearly gave in to the temptation to just let him go.

_This is for your own good._

God... Had he actually fucking _said_ that? To a kid who had probably heard that exact phrase or something like it a bare second before the blow that had left that bruise?

"Fuck. I am so, so sorry," he whispered. He released his grip on Adam's arms and let his arms slide around Adam to pull him into a hug. Instead of collapsing into the hug like Ronan expected, Adam froze. His eyes were wide and wild with confusion, not too different from when he'd first appeared by the rock.

"It's okay, Adam." Ronan said. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I promise, okay?"

Right. Like Adam would believe a scary looking stranger who'd grabbed him and then promptly said the kind of words that came before a beating.

Ronan closed his eyes. His head slumped forward so that his forehead was resting against Adam's. He remembered now what the third trial was. 

It was a fire. A burning coal. 

The searing shame of what he'd said and couldn't unsay. The agony of seeing how fucking scared and helpless Adam was, and the vacant stillness that meant Adam was braced for a blow he still expected would come any second now.

He let his hands rest loosely on Adam's back for a moment, not quite holding on, not quite letting go. Not yet.

It was one thing to fight to hold on when Adam was fighting back and spitting poison at him. It was another to fight to hold onto and patch together the scraps of humanity that had been lost in Cabeswater's vastness. He'd either had something to fight against or fight for.

This was something else entirely and Ronan didn't know if he could do it. He didn't know how to fix it. He lifted his head after a while and moved his hand from Adam's back to the side of his face, watching in something like awe as his hand covered not just the bruise but nearly half of Adam's head in the bargain. The way Adam flinched was bad enough, but the way he just stood there, still and resigned to whatever happened next, was worse.

The forest surrounding the clearing and the rock went quiet and still in a way that suggested it was holding its breath. Even the insects were silent, now.

"I don't know what to do," Ronan told Adam, who was shivering and looking like he wanted to cry but couldn't remember how. Instead, he just looked sort of lost, like he'd run away inside his own head. Ronan gently touched the edges of the bruise on Adam's face, careful not to go anywhere near the raw and scraped bit across the cheekbone. Looking more closely, Ronan could see how the skin under Adam's eye was puffy with the beginnings of a black eye.

"Your dad did this to you, didn't he?" Ronan fought to keep the anger out of his voice, but the flash of terror in Adam's eyes told him he failed.

"I fell down," Adam said. It was smooth, and flat, and one hundred percent a lie. It was the same kind of lie as the cold, vacant _it's nothing_ s Adam would toss at them when he showed up to school with bruises on his face or burns on his arm. 

Ronan hated lies, and he had always wanted to bash his own damn head against a wall in frustration whenever Adam kept lying and lying and lying about what was happening in that festering shit-hole he called a home. He just didn't get it. He didn't get why Adam kept trying to hide what was happening, or why he didn't just up and deck that asshole that had no right to call itself a father. 

"I fell down, honest!" Adam said again with an edge of panic, desperate to be believed, and Ronan finally got it. It wasn't Ronan's anger that had scared Adam, was it?

When Ronan had been growing up, Niall Lynch had been all about secrets. People outside the family couldn't know about all the wonders and dangers hidden at the Barns. They couldn't know about all the marvelous and horrible things that could be brought out of a dream. At the time, not knowing about Greenmantles or Grey Men, Ronan had thought it all a game, or a trick they were playing on the rest of the world. A game, yes, but a very important one. Telling Gansey and the others about what he could do was one of the most frightening things he'd ever done in his life, and he'd spent much of the next three days wishing he could take it back.

Adam had also learned how to keep secrets about his family. Adam's father had used him as a punching bag, and the punishment for tattling would no doubt have been more of the same. And his mother had been the sort of person who had been more worried about what the neighbors gawking at the spectacle might think than she was about her own son who was crumpled on the ground and bleeding out of his left ear.

Ronan remembered that fight. There was the dark satisfaction of landing a sweet punch right on Robert Parrish's jaw, and then the kind of knock-down, drag-out brawl that got his blood singing. There had been one moment, though, when Ronan thought that he was seriously fucked. He'd been knocked down, and before he could level the playing field by tripping Robert Parrish onto his ass, Ronan had been the target of a few hard kicks to the ribs and a near miss to his head. It was dirty fighting, far dirtier than Ronan usually got caught up in, but Robert Parrish hadn't hesitated before trying to drive the heel of his boot through Ronan's spine.

Ronan had always wondered why the hell Adam just never fought back. The Adam _he_ knew had always been tall. A little on the scrawny side, yeah, but strong from hours of working on cars and hauling boxes and trailer parts. Strong and smart and determined as fuck. There was no way an ignorant loser like Robert Parrish should have kept someone as amazing as Adam so cowed.

But Ronan had never known Adam as anything younger than sixteen, near grown and already stubbornly independent. The Adam that Ronan knew was driven, and determined, and a fighter.

He'd never even imagined this other Adam, with his bird-boned arms and frightened eyes, whose automatic reaction to a hug was to brace for impact.

Ronan remembered the first punch Robert Parrish had landed on his jaw, and how he had actually seen flashes of white light and heard a buzzing in his ears. The bruise had ached for days afterward. But it was okay, because Ronan didn't mind a fight and he knew how to give as good as he got. Every blow Robert Parrish landed was an excuse for Ronan to get in two of his own in return.

"That fucking bastard," he said, looking at the bruise on the side of Adam's face and feeling his stomach twist as he pictured a large fist and heavy boots connecting with a tiny body. When had it started? Had there ever been a time when it didn't suck? What the fuck was wrong with Adam's mother that he didn't even know what a hug was supposed to be? How many teachers had heard the words 'I fell down' over and over again and never questioned it? Why the fuck hadn't anyone _done_ something?

The side of Ronan's head throbbed with anger and remembered pain. 

"I swear I am going to fucking kill that asshole," he hissed. He instantly regretted it, though, when Adam startled and then eyed him warily. 

Ronan sighed. "I'm not mad at you, okay? You've done _nothing_ wrong."

Adam gave him the side-eye. Clearly, he didn't believe Ronan on either count. Adults - which included Ronan, frighteningly enough - were not to be trusted. Fathers hit, mothers didn't offer comfort, and teachers and neighbors all just looked the other way.

Ronan couldn't begin to imagine what that must have been like. If Niall Lynch ever grabbed a younger Ronan without warning, it was only to swing him up into the air, laughing, and then light him down again as gentle as you please. The only blows that ever landed were in the course of teaching Ronan how to defend himself from people who did want to hurt him and how to find the wild joy that went with a good fight.

And then there were all of the easy touches that went along with daily life at the Barns. Someone ruffling your hair for no reason other than they had hands and you had hair and were within easy reach as they passed by. The forehead and cheek kisses that Mom doled out as naturally as she breathed. Casual hip-checks or dope-slaps from brothers just because.

Ronan wasn't stupid enough to believe that his childhood was perfect. His parents had allowed themselves to play favorites, and even as a child Ronan had known on some level that this wasn't fair. Also, Dad had kept secrets even from his family, and would be gone for weeks at a time with not so much as a phone call, and Ronan nearly went crazy from never knowing what was the truth and what was a lie and what was a story.

But until that day when he'd found his father with his head bashed in, the Barns and everything around them had always been _safe._ Even when the inside of Ronan's head was a scary place, home was always the opposite of that. He had been surrounded by safety the way a fish was surrounded by water, while Adam had grown up in the fucking Sahara.

"I'm not gonna let anything hurt you, okay?"

Again, Adam looked mistrustful. He also kept glancing off to the side, alert for a very particular danger. 

"He's not here," Ronan said. There was no need to put a name to who 'he' was. Ronan hoped he hadn't unintentionally told a lie - who the fuck knew if Cabeswater might decide to pluck a very specific kind of night terror from his mind.

"He'll be there. When I get home." It was the most this Adam had said to him, and it barely sounded like the Adam he knew, and it was more than just him being a little kid. For one thing, this Adam hadn't even thought about learning to hide his Henrietta accent. "An' I'll be in trouble."

The other thing was that he sounded so damned defeated. The Adam that Ronan knew would have at least had some anger shoring up those words. This Adam had none of that. Just fatigue and a sense that he was speaking from somewhere very far away inside his own head.

"It's not your fault," Ronan said. It wasn't a surprise to see how Adam's head hung and his shoulders caved in.

"I try and try, but I'm still bad," he said, and it tore at Ronan to hear how he fucking _believed_ that. "They give me a good home and they take care of me, and I do nothin' but cause them trouble, 'cause I'm ungrateful," he went on, and it sounded like a quote.

Ronan seethed. Was there a part of Adam that _still_ believed that toxic bullshit? Maybe Adam would swear up and down that he didn't believe it, but maybe there was still a fragment of that old belief left, poisoning him the way the last fragment of the Third Sleeper was slowly killing Gansey and Cabeswater.

What Ronan _wanted_ to say required a lot of yelling, but that wasn't what Adam needed. He made himself take a few deep breaths before he spoke, and he met Adam's eyes as much as Adam would let him.

"They're wrong. They haven't given you a good home. They gave you a _shitty_ home, and they fucking _suck_ as parents. Like, a lot."

Ronan's leg was starting to ache, so he shifted from his knees to his butt. He kept a gentle hold of Adam's arms.

"You should have had something better, and it sucks balls that you didn't."

Adam shrugged and refused to meet Ronan's eyes, as if the suggestion of having something good only made him more miserable, because it was something he knew he could never have. 

"I try to be good, but it ain't ever enough," he said, and the deadness in his voice was yet another hot coal in Ronan's heart. "It won't ever be enough."

"That's..." Ronan barely stopped himself from snapping _that's bullshit_. This Adam was so close to giving up that it was hard to imagine him becoming the fighter that Ronan knew and loved so. damned. much.

 _Adam would hate knowing I'd seen him like this. Fuck... he'd never forgive me, would he?_ Ronan thought. His head was pounding, and the exhaustion was starting to kick in, but his thoughts started to click together even as they grew slower and clumsier.

"You _are_ good, okay? And what you've done, it was way more than enough." It was. Adam had sacrificed his hands and eyes to Cabeswater to stop Whelk. He'd sacrificed everything else to save him and Gansey and Blue.

And how much of that last sacrifice was because some part of Adam still believed that he wasn't good enough, that no one could ever...

He let his hands slide down Adam's arms until he could take Adam's hands in his own. 

"Do you have any idea how fucking amazing you turn out to be?" Ronan said, and he didn't try to fight the tears that were welling up in his eyes and thickening his voice. He squeezed Adam's hands gently but firm enough to be felt, to get his attention. "You get out of there, Adam. You've got to believe me, okay? You figure out how to get out, and you work your ass off and you _make it happen_."

Adam actually looked at him, still scared but curious now, much like he'd been when Ronan tried talking Latin to him.

"Yeah. That's what you do. You get in to a fancy-ass school that'll help you get into any damn college you want, and you work like eighteen different jobs to pay for it and you're still the best student in our class. Do you remember that?"

Of course Adam couldn't remember that - for him, all of that was a decade and change in the future. Or maybe he could. There was part of him that had a kind of slippery relationship with time now, right?

Or something. Ronan was having trouble keeping his thoughts from jumbling up. The important thing was, it was his job to remember _for_ Adam.

It was just like his older self had said, at a time when every single word took time he couldn't spare: _Remember what's real_.

And that was what he was supposed to remember for Adam, wasn't it? For each of the trials, he'd had to remember what was real, even if Adam himself had forgotten.

When Adam had made his first bargain with Cabeswater, his heart had been boiling with anger and bitterness and pride. But he was so much more than that. And Ronan had helped him remember.

"It probably doesn't seem like it now, but there's so much more than this."

When Adam had made his second bargain with Cabeswater, he had nearly been lost. He had forgotten who he was, but Ronan had remembered. He'd been remembering even before he came to the heart of Cabeswater, with pieces of Adam's and Mom's and Persephone's memories falling out of his dreams and into the waking world. 

The things Ronan had brought out had been real, Calla said, and now Ronan was beginning to understand. Not entirely, because it was becoming harder to think straight, but at a gut level, he was starting to get it. He was starting to get what his dream abilities were actually _for_.

"You got dealt a shitty hand. A real shitty hand. I mean, everything just plain sucks, and it's been like that as long as you can remember, right?"

Over the eons, so much of Adam had been scattered this way and that throughout Cabeswater and along the ley line until all that was left was this:

A terrified and lonely child who didn't believe there could be anything more. That _he_ could be anything more. 

"Well, here's what you don't remember."

As he spoke, Ronan remembered a few things himself. Things that were real. Like the first time they had gone to Fox Way, and Adam had drawn a card. A not very nice card, from Ronan's way of thinking.

"You know that shitty hand you were dealt? It told you what your choices were, but you they all sucked. So you know what you did?"

There was another thing Ronan remembered, something far more recent. He let go of one of Adam's hands and reached back to get out the card Orphan Girl had given him. Miracle of miracles, it was still intact and unbent, exactly as he had seen it before.

He held The Magician out to Adam. Adam didn't take it. He didn't even look at it.

"You made your own damn choice. A completely new one. You couldn't change what was given to you, but you didn't let it decide who you were. Remember?"

Adam finally let himself look at the card. It was hard for Ronan to read his face, but he swallowed hard. Above them, the blinding blue sky was starting to shade towards twilight. Ronan craned his head so he could see the watch - there was scarcely a minute left on either side of the **VI**.

"You have to remember, Adam. Like you said, I don't have much time left." His leg hurt worse than ever, and the headache had turned to a deep throbbing on the left side of his head. He didn't feel cold, but he was somehow aware that he _was_ cold.

He kept holding out the card, shaking it a little to encourage Adam to take it.

"You chose this, and you figured out how to get out, and you've got people who are going to help you. Not just me. A whole bunch of others. Do you remember them? Gansey? Blue? Noah?" He paused for a moment, watching Adam look at the card and blink tears from his eyes. "Do you remember who gave this to you? Do you remember Persephone?"

Adam nodded. The tears slipped free. Not many, just a few, but they were there. He went to touch the card, but flinched back for a moment as if expecting to have his hand swatted. But then something happened. Ronan couldn't quite put his finger on it, but Adam's back seemed to straighten, and he reached out, fingers stopping just shy of the card. He studied it for a good long time, even as the light faded and detail became harder to see.

"Yeah. That's right. That's you. That's who you choose to be. You can choose it again. If you want."

There was so much Ronan wanted to tell him about, wanted to show him, but thinking had become like running through thick mud. But he had to remember. That was his job. That was the Greywaren's job.

He had remember what was real and to use his dream abilities to assert that reality. He knew that now. All those souls who became lost on the ley line. The Greywaren could find them, and could help them remember what was real. He could help them remember who they were.

"Do you remember now?"

Adam nodded. The tears were freely streaming down his face. 

He took the card.

It was like the quietest explosion in the world. The trees surrounding the clearing rustled and then stilled, and Ronan thought he could feel things shift and then settle deep below - or maybe all around - him. 

As for Adam, Ronan thought he was seeing all of him at once, all of his selves, laid bare before him. Older, younger, more forest than human. Angry and wounded. Laughing and enjoying the rareness of being at ease. Scattered across years and miles and going for eons before finding a soul who understood him. Strong enough to hold someone else who was suffering. Studious and determined and taking on any challenge Aglionby could throw at him. Small and scared and alone and not daring to think that things could be any better than this.

As daylight faded, Ronan could now see other lights in the heart of Cabeswater. 

A faint glow from the stone where Gansey lay, with a pulse to it that made the painted ravens look alive, and troubling streaks of darkness leaching up from the ground.

The first and brightest stars just now becoming visible in the sky.

The ley line, spirit road, corpse road, soul road - whatever you wanted to call it - rose up from beneath the stone like a subterranean river made of an infinity of small, ever-moving sparks of light. It flowed off into a distance he couldn't see, but it bent slightly as it did so, brushing up against Adam's feet the way a cat might twine between his ankles.

"You see," Ronan said, and Christ, he was tired. "I told you. You get out."

Adam was a child again, his hand so small it was nearly lost in Ronan's.

"But it still hurts," he said quietly.

"I know." Ronan tugged Adam towards him. It was gentle, but this Adam was so tiny he stumbled and fell against Ronan. He still kept hold of the card, though. "And I'm sorry."

Ronan wasn't sure what to expect, but it certainly wasn't young Adam bursting into tears and pressing his face into Ronan's shoulder. Ronan stroked his back, offering Adam a comfort that had been withheld for too damned long.

"Yeah, it hurts like hell." There was probably a part of Adam that would always be this battered and hopeless child, just as there was part of Ronan that would never stop missing Dad or regretting how things had become with Declan. "I wish I could fix it for you. But I can't."

Adam began to flicker in Ronan's arms as the sky grew darker and Ronan grew colder. He was large again, then small, and then he was the _moreness_ of Cabeswater. Or it wasn't so much a flicker as seeing all three at once. It was hard to tell. The pulsing pain at the side of his head made it hard to focus. 

"Or maybe I can," Ronan said. He could hear his voice slurring. Everything hurt. "I'm waking up. I can feel it. And I can take you with me. I remember who you are. I can bring you back."

He closed his eyes. Adam's arms tightened around him, then flickered away and flickered back again.

"I could do it, right now, but like I said, I remember who you are. And I remember that you always choose who you are."

Ronan slid a hand up and down Adam's back, no longer feeling the frail bones of a child, but the sturdy frame of a man who worked harder than he should have to.

"You can choose a new path, if you want. A new start. I did it for Noah, did you know that? Did you see it? I can do that for you. If you want."

The flickering paused, and he had the child version of Adam in his arms again.

"You won't have to go through all the shit you went through. You can have a family who loves you. You won't have to work five times as hard as everyone else to earn what other people just get handed to them. And you won't have to sell yourself to Cabeswater. I'll remember what you said about Gansey, and I'll figure out a way to fix things. I promise."

"Ronan..."

It was a child's voice, and it was the whisper of a million trees. It was a low, well-loved voice warm against Ronan's ear.

"You won't have to remember any of it. What your father did to you. What you had to go through. Not if you don't want to. But I hope you remember that you're still awesome and incredible, and that I love you."

Ronan desperately wanted _his_ Adam back. He'd been wanting and wanting for the past week, and finding Adam again had only made the wanting worse. But if this wasn't Adam's choice...

... then it wouldn't be Adam. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered.

"Whatever you choose, I love you. I love you. And maybe part of you will remember that."

He held on to Adam and held his breath. 

_Fear not_ , the song had said. And to his surprise, he wasn't afraid. He didn't know why, but he wasn't afraid. Whatever happened next, would be right. The trials were over. He'd held on. He'd won.

The flickering stopped. Adam remained, strong and solid and just as Ronan remembered him. Ronan felt a tight squeeze and then an exasperated huff of breath against his neck.

"Are you kiddin' me, Lynch? I've got less than six months 'til I graduate. You really think I'm giving up now?"

Ronan laughed. "You asshole. You fucking asshole. God, I love you so much but get the hell off my lap because you're heavy and _fuck_ my leg hurts."

Adam let a frown slip before schooling his expression again, and then he shifted up onto his knees, straddling Ronan's thighs. He took hold of Ronan's hand, and at first Ronan thought Adam was going to kiss it, but no. He just held Ronan's hand steady so they could both see the watch. 

The hands nearly overlapped, closing like scissors over the **VI** as if it were a thread about to be snipped. The triangle of blank space between the tips of the hand grew smaller as they watched.

Adam looked up at him with wide, worried eyes. "You need to _wake up_ , Ronan."

"But Gansey..." Ronan knew that they couldn't do anything for him right there, but it felt wrong to just leave him.

"It'll be okay," Adam said, and for the first time in more than two weeks, Ronan believed that it would.

But he still needed to finish waking up, and his head was fucking killing him and it was weird how all he wanted to do was sleep even though he _was_ asleep. He was about to say something to that effect, but for some reason, Adam broke into a brilliant smile.

"About damn time, Lynch. I'll see you on the other side."

Above them, the stars were coming out. The sky above them grew darker and darker, and then it just _grew_. Then, the stars began to fall all around them, but one brushed against Ronan's cheek and it was just snow.

The world shifted. Settled.

Ronan sagged into Adam's arms. The forest around them was filled with the croaking of ravens. The cold and wet seeped into his bones, and everything hurt. But it was okay, because Adam was holding him.

"Ronan, I - " Adam stopped, and Ronan hissed at the sudden sting as Adam touched the side of his head. "Oh, fuck... Ronan! What the hell?"

"Told you I damn near killed myself to find you," Ronan said. Or maybe he just thought it. He wished Adam wouldn't worry, but he was screaming for someone to help and Ronan wished he would stop and let him sleep. Besides, there was no one around. Just the ravens. And Adam. But Adam kept calling out, and then someone answered.

"Christ on a crutch... _Adam?_ Is that you?"

"Calla! We're over here!" Adam called out. Ronan heard other voices over the cries of the ravens, growing closer and closer as Adam kept yelling _Over here! Over here!_

Or maybe it was just a dream, because Ronan thought he heard Mom.

"Hold on, Ronan, okay?" Adam begged. "You gotta hold on."

He did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, epilogue!  
> I don't want to jinx myself by telling you all my self-imposed deadline for posting, but it shouldn't take anywhere near as long for me to get through as these last three chapters. 
> 
> I know I have a lot of plot threads to wrap up/questions to answer. Gansey is asleep/in peril, Matthew is traumatized, Ronan has a sampler pack of fairly serious injuries, Blue may or may not be inclined to forgive Ronan (tbh, Ronan should be more worried about Maura...), Aurora is still stuck in Cabeswater, there's still some questions about the memories Ronan pulled out of his dreams, etc. I do plan to address all of these and more. That said, if there's anything I didn't mention that you're worried I won't cover, please feel free to mention it in the comments.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan wakes up. So does someone else. Ronan re-examines what he thought he knew about his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last winter, I thought that I could wrap this up with a short epilogue. Nine months and 25,000 words later, however...
> 
> Anyhow, to make a long story even longer, I wanted to end this right and make sure that all of the major plot threads were addressed. It took me a lot longer than expected, not just because of the length of the chapters but a whole host of RL issues, writer's block, and so on. I'm finally done, though, and I hope the ending satisfies. As a reminder, this story goes _massively_ AU after BLLB, so some things we learned about certain characters in TRK simply do not apply here.
> 
> Given the length of the 'epilogue,' I'll be posting it in three parts over the weekend as I do my final editing passes. Everything is done, but just needs one final scrub.
> 
> I have to again give many thanks to my beta reader and cheerleader, aishuu, who pushed me to do my best, and didn't let me take the easy way out on some difficult scenes. Also, thanks to all of you who have stuck with me so patiently, and I hope you enjoy these last few chapters.

_You gotta hold on._

Adam's voice was a memory no it was sound no it was slipping away _no_

He had to hold on. He had to hold. He had to.

Tenere stricta.

_You're gonna be okay, Lynch. Please. You gotta be okay..._

Ronan wanted to tell him not to cry for fuck's sake why are you crying you asshole and then he went quiet and slipped from Ronan's grasp. 

Oh. 

Right.

Dreaming again. _Still_ dreaming. He didn't know. He couldn't tell.

If was a strange dream. Bits and snips, none of them making any sense, slipping in and past memory, fading in and out of darkness. 

Was this how normal people dreamed?

Maybe it was, because it felt real but he knew it couldn't be. It wasn't real because Adam was there, but Adam was dead. No, he had saved Adam. Hadn't he? Maybe it _was_ real.

No. It wasn't. Couldn't be. Mom was there but she couldn't be there but she had kissed him on the forehead and told him he was going to be okay and why the fuck couldn't that be _real?_

He dreamed that Adam was alive and clasping his hand, squeezing hard enough to hurt. He marveled that he knew it was Adam's hand. Even in dreams, he knew. Would always know.

He held on, trying to remember that this was real. But it couldn't be real. It had to be a dream. It had to be real.

He held on as tight as he could.

_Lynch?_

He held on with all his might. It wasn't anything near enough, but he wasn't about to give up. Not now. Not when it all felt so fucking real. He kept holding on.

 _Ronan? Can you hear_ me? Calla! He's waking up again!"

Adam's voice went from faint to painful without warning. 

Someone shouted _Of course it would happen while she's out getting coffee. I'll be right back. Try to keep him with us!_ and a door slammed so hard he thought the ceiling would come down. He didn't hear it so much as feel it as two jabs of pain behind his eyes.

"About damn time, Lynch." It sounded like Adam's voice, but shaky with tears and five times louder than it should be. "You gonna stay with us this time?"

Ronan groaned and tried to pull his hand away. "Christ, Parrish. Turn it down a fucking notch, will you?"

Adam held on. "Good to see you, too, jackass." He spoke more softly this time around, but it still hurt. 

Hell, everything hurt, especially his head. And his leg. But mostly his head. Basically, it felt like he'd been kicked in the crotch all over his body. At least it wasn't so fucking cold. He still felt a chill deep in his bones, but the blankets covering him were wonderfully warm. So was Adam's hand. It felt good.

He opened his eyes as much as he dared, but light was not his friend at the moment. Even with his eyes squinched most of the way shut, he could make out a familiar face and a worried smile. Someone was holding his hand. 

Adam? What was Adam doing there... wait, he'd been there. Right?

He couldn't remember.

"You're alive," Ronan said, or maybe asked. "This isn't a dream."

"I thought you said you could always tell dreams from reality." A hint of laughter shimmered beneath Adam's deadpan delivery.

Ronan wanted to say something scathing and clever, but half-formed insults slipped away before he could catch them in his mouth. All he could say was: 

"I don't know. I -"

 _Maybe I dreamt you_.

He wanted Adam to say something, to tell him that this was real, to tell him he didn't have to be afraid, but Adam went quiet for a little while. He simply sat by Ronan's side and brought his other hand up so that he clasped Ronan's hand in both of his own.

"Well, you know you did hit your head pretty hard," Adam said after what felt like far too long. It also felt like there was a lot more he was not saying.

"Yeah, but I also did when..." Ronan cut himself short, not even wanting to _think_ about crashing the Pig and what had come after. "Nothing changed."

"But that was less than six months ago. That's why the doctor said she wanted to keep you in the hospital overn-"

His wrists burned with the memory of bandages that were halfway to restraints.

"Hospital? Doctor? What the... Oh, _hell_ no!" Ronan sat up sharply, and _wow_ that was a bad idea, even worse than the idea of doctors and everyone getting all up in his business and asking him just how had he hurt himself, and why. Adam didn't even need to pin him back down by his shoulder, but he did anyway, the asshole.

"Dammit, Lynch! You literally cracked your damn skull, okay? That's not something you just... just... walk off! Which you couldn't anyway, because you also broke your leg, genius. Plus, you damn near froze to death, remember? What the hell were you _doing_ out there, anyway? Did you really think you had to try to kill yourself to save me?"

 _It would have been worth it_ , he didn't say, but it looked like Adam could read him just as well as he could read Adam because Adam's grip on his hand tightened to the point of pain as Adam leaned in close.

"It would _not_ have been worth it, Ronan. Don't you _ever_ think that!" The hiss in his voice was like Snake Adam's but there was no poison in it.

Ronan cracked his eyes open a little more, studying Adam. There was anger there, all right, but Adam was also blinking away tears before they could fall. There were so many things he should say, but Ronan could not stop trying to stare at what he now saw. It was harder than it should have been to focus, though.

"What?" Adam snapped.

"Your eyes..."

Adam's eyes were blue, but they weren't just blue anymore. Flecks of deep green glowed faintly in the dimmed light, surging and waning beneath the familiar blue.

"Yeah. I know. It's some side effect from the deal. I'm still figuring it out." Adam let out a caustic laugh and sat back, but it felt like some weird tension had broken where it should have ratcheted up. "But it's still me, you know that, right? Is that why you think this isn't real? That it's still a dream?"

Adam rubbed his thumb in circles across the back of Ronan's hand as if saying _I'm here, I'm real, I'm still me_ over and over again.

Ronan said nothing.

"I'd kiss you to prove it to you, but most of your face is a giant bruise, so you'd probably punch me if I tried. For the record, you look like shit. You might lose a couple of teeth. Or need a root canal in a few months."

"Thanks, asshole."

Adam waited. So did Ronan. But Adam had always been the more patient of the two of them.

"I don't know if you're real because I kept hearing your voice while I was out, but you were dead. You and - "

"That's because we kept talking to you on the way to the hospital, trying to keep you with us, but you faded out about halfway there and wouldn't wake up. You gave us a hell of a scare, Lynch. You did wake up for a little bit a couple of hours ago, but you were giving Gwenllian some stiff competition when it came to making sense."

"But I also heard Mom."

Adam's thumb stopped circling. The abruptness of it was a jolt. "Ronan," he said carefully after a too-long silence, "what do you remember about your accident and what happened after? Exactly?"

Ronan told him everything he remembered. Well, _almost_ everything. He told Adam about losing his shit with Blue over that damned list, but he didn't say anything about the look of pure fear on her face or how much the idea of ever seeing her again fucking terrified him. He told Adam about hitting Matthew but not about that look of betrayal or what he had finally figured out about who Matthew had been or how he had come to be.

He also didn't tell Adam about the dark, featureless patches in between those vivid blips of memory.

He did tell Adam about driving off into the woods, but he didn't talk about the blank spot between then and wandering through the woods and not knowing what the fuck was going on. Instead, he skipped right to all the crazy things that happened once he fell into the borderlands between sleep and death. _Those_ things he remembered in too much detail, but he just rattled off a quick and bloodless summary of events. He didn't say anything about the fear or the frustration or all the things that he was still trying to understand.

Throughout all of it, Adam didn't interrupt even once. He nodded or made little noises of agreement at certain points - Ronan's mention of Gansey and the vines, for example - and he looked steadfastly off into a corner and squeezed Ronan's hand a little too tightly when Ronan talked about the last trial, but that was all.

"Then you said you'd see me on the other side, and next thing I know, everything fucking hurts and you're screaming your head off for help."

"Nothing after that?"

"No, because I was fucking unconscious because, according to you, I bashed in my skull."

Adam went _hmmm_ in a way that made Ronan want to strangle him. "Like I said, you were awake for a little bit on the way to the hospital, but you must have forgotten that."

"Uh, ya think?"

Another _hmmm_.

"Do you remember fixing the ley line?"

"Yeah, that happened... last night? Shit. That can't be right. Can it?" Christ, had all this shit just happened in the space of a day? Everything was all jumbled up. "How long was I out?"

"Well, you were only out maybe eight hours? Calla said I was, um, _gone_ about a week, so - " Adam paused as someone approached the door, then swiftly got up to meet them. Ronan's hand went cold with the sudden absence of Adam's, but Adam shushed his protest and told whoever it was at the door to wait just a moment. An indistinct someone was quick to argue, and Adam slipped outside to talk to them. There was some more argument - heated, but not angry. It was muffled enough that Ronan couldn't recognize any voices or make out any words. Then, everyone went quiet and Adam came back in the room. 

"Okay," Adam said, and he sounded kind of shaky. "We still don't know what exactly happened or why or how, but you fixing the ley line had some side effects. Or something."

Kavinsky's joke about _unfortunate side effects_ echoed in his head, K's voice overlapping the voice of his older self as he popped the pill. He also an echo of the fear that had come with the thought that fixing the ley line might have undone Matthew and Chainsaw.

"What happened?" Ronan rasped. He sat up as much as he dared, clutching at his blankets wanting to hear and wanting not to hear.

Adam backed away, lifting his hands as if to calm Ronan. Ronan's fear didn't even have a chance to spike before he saw that the bastard was smiling, really smiling, and it was one of those rare and precious times when it actually showed in his eyes. "It's okay, Lynch. It's more than okay."

"What the hell's going on, Parrish?"

Adam was close enough to the door that he could reach back and grab the handle.

"What's going on is that when you fixed the ley line, someone woke up - all the way up - and was about halfway to the Barns when Calla drove by."

Ronan's first muddled thought was _Gansey?_ But going to save him hadn't happened yet. Had it?

Adam's smile shifted to an evil grin, but there was something to it that seemed more giddy than malicious. He slowly pushed down the lever. "You sure you're ready for this, Lynch?"

"If you don't get on with it, I will beat you to death with a bedpan," Ronan said. He was trying for 'unimpressed,' but he knew that something was about to change, something as fundamental as death and just as big.

Adam pulled the door open and stood aside. For a moment, Ronan wondered if he was dreaming when he saw who walked through the door. 

He would never in a million years admit it, and Adam never once teased him about it afterward, but his voice cracked like he was a five-year-old about to cry.

"Mom?"

Aurora stood there for a moment, still and staring, but then she was across the room with a cry of _oh, Ronan... oh, my baby..._ and she had her arms around him. She was gentle and oh-so-careful of his breaks and bruises, but Ronan clung to her as if she was the only thing holding him to the here and now.

Maybe she was.

He didn't understand half the things she said to him. There were apologies (but why?) and forgiveness (for what?), but all that mattered was the sound of her softly lilting accent and the smell of her as he buried his face in her hair. He smelled Cabeswater, but he also smelled her rose perfume and bad hospital coffee and something more primal than all of those that was just _Mom_.

"You're here," he finally said, once he remembered how to speak.

"I am, love. I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. Not anymore."

He didn't care that Adam was there. He didn't care that Calla had come back into the room. He wept, plain and simple, and his mother was there to catch his tears.

She was real, she was real, she was _real_.

* * *

When Ronan woke up again some hours later, his first thought was that he didn't remember falling asleep. His second thought was that he had been dreaming, but for some reason he could only remember bits and scraps, and felt like he'd left something undone.

His third thought was that he really didn't want to look at whatever dream object he had for some reason found important to haul out of his dream. But then someone took the choice - and a smooth, roughly circular object - out of his hands.

"I assume this means you're awake?" The voice was familiar, and had an edge to it that Ronan interpreted as 'pissed off.' "I'll give you a minute to get unstuck, or whatever it is that happens to you after you dream. Then we've got to hit the road."

Great. Maura Sargent was in his room, and he was in no shape to protect himself from whatever vengeance she was preparing to dole out. And, of course, it felt like it took five times longer than it should have to shake off the post-dream paralysis. When he did, he felt as if every single hangover he'd ever had had come back for a special encore performance.

There was no sign of Mom or Adam. His eyes went from slits to wide open with panic. He wanted to look to either side but he still could not move, and he couldn't get his eyes to focus completely. In fact, for a moment, he saw _two_ Mauras, which was two too many.

"Adam is asleep on a bench in the waiting room. Your mother is talking to the doctor. You're not dreaming." It was a plain recitation of facts, again with that underlying pissed-offness, and Ronan found it more comforting than if she were trying to soothe him. "Also, if you weren't in that hospital bed, believe me, I would be kicking your pathetic ass from here to the state line and back again. And _then_ I'd hand you over to Calla. I'm willing to play nice for now, but you are _not_ off the hook for what you did to Blue."

"I know," he said when he could finally talk. 

"Good. We'll talk about Blue and your anger management issues later, but - "

"She lied to me about your fucking death list."

There was a long silence. Maura studied him for a good while, her mouth pressed to a thin line. 

"I maybe get why Adam wasn't on it," he went on, "but if Declan's name was on there, she should have - "

"It wasn't," she said curtly. "After your brother was killed, Blue went back and read this year's list five times through, trying to see if she had written it down wrong. Declan's not exactly a common name. She didn't find anything. Now, Neeve may have missed a few while Blue was trying to talk to Gansey's spirit..."

And Gansey might still die. For real, and forever. He remembered the darkness in those vines almost as well as he remembered his own name.

"But it's more likely that the simplest explanation is the best one." Maura took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, she no longer sounded angry. Just tired. "The only people who are on that list are people who are born around here, or have some kind of tie to the ley line the way Gansey does. The list gives some warning, but it's never enough. It didn't tell us about Persephone, even though she lost herself the way Adam did. She... she wasn't from here. So we didn't know. We had no idea."

Ronan heard the growing thickness in her voice and he thought about Declan, and how he never been a part of the Barns the way Ronan and Matthew were. Ronan, who had been born in one room of that old farmhouse, and Matthew, who had been pulled from dreams in another. But Declan had been born a whole ocean away, back in Belfast, and had been whisked away with his mother to the States when he was not even a month old. Despite spending all but a fraction of his life at the Barns, Declan had never loved this land, and this land had never loved him.

Ronan gritted his teeth and blinked away the prickle of tears he didn't want to shed.

"I need to talk to Mom. I need..." He closed his eyes and swallowed hard against the pain. "I need to tell her about Declan."

"She knows."

Ronan surged bolt upright, only to be knocked right back down again by a burst of nausea and pain. He seethed in silence for a moment and once again fought back furious tears.

"You fucking told her?" he snarled through clenched teeth. "You had no fucking right!"

Her sigh grated on his ears. "I might not have the same right as a family member, Ronan, but I do have the right as a mother whose child has been very badly hurt and who understands not wanting to make that pain any worse." He couldn't see her face, didn't want to see her face, but he heard the misery there. "You were the one who had to tell her about your father, weren't you?"

He was. It had been one of the last things he told her before she sank into her years-long sleep and he and his brothers were exiled from their home. 

The first night horrors that had shown up in his dreams had screamed the way she had.

Maura went quiet again, a thoughtful quiet that worried him.

"What?"

She turned something over and over in her hands. It was dark and shiny, and he thought he caught a glint of red. The dream object she had taken, or something else? "Your father died a little over two years ago, right?"

Ronan knew better than to nod, and a grunt passed for a 'yes.' He didn't want to talk about this. And neither did Maura, apparently, because she stayed quiet for a good while longer, turning the red shiny thing over and over in her hands.

"Your mother has been asleep for most of that time, Ronan," she said finally. It sounded so simple, so plain, and yet...

Dad's death was still fresh in her mind and now she had just learned that she had lost her oldest child as well.

"Merry fucking Christmas, Mom."

Maura let out a sharp, startled laugh. She didn't apologize, and Ronan liked her a little better for it. 

"That's about the size of it, Ronan. The other thing you need to understand is that she came damned close to losing _you_ , so..." She sighed. "There's going to be a part of her that still believes she's supposed to be grieving three people, so keep that in mind and, well, you're not going to like this and it's probably not going to do any good to tell you this, but be patient. I'll do what I can to help. Jimi will too. She's also lost too many people too soon. And she's kind. She'll be able to give your mother what you and I can't."

"I don't need - " he started, but Maura cut him off with a glare.

"We're not talking about what _you_ need, which is a hell of a lot of rest and a swift kick in the ass. What your mother needs is for you to be her child. She needs her babies around her right now."

Ronan was about to protest that she had Matthew for that, and that he sure as hell was no baby, but he knew truth when he heard it. "Fine. So, now what?"

"Now we wait for the nurse to come with a wheelchair - "

"A what, now?" Oh, _hell_ no...

" - and check you out of here against medical advice." She smirked. "Let's just say that one of the ER docs is a regular client and knew better than to ask for explanations when I told her you would be _much_ better off home than here."

"Home?" He tried and failed not to sound too eager.

"Your mom thought it would be a bad idea for you to stay here much longer, and I have to say, I agree with her."

Maura held out the shiny object to him and he reached for it automatically.

It was a smooth but irregular disk of dark red glass. There were no sharp edges and no rough spots, and it was too concave to be a coaster but too shallow to be a bowl.

"What the fuck is this?" he said, even though he knew it at once as a dream object. It was obviously a dream thing the way the copies of the cassette tape and the hand lotion and Mom's wedding ring weren't. He just wasn't sure what it was supposed to be. Or why he'd dreamed it.

"What it is, is a sign that your mother is right that everyone will be safer if you are _not here_. I don't think this is like the other stuff you've been bringing out of your dreams recently?"

"Memories." He turned the glass over and over in his hands. Something about it seemed familiar, and recently familiar as well. He knew he knew it, but the knowledge scattered like a school of minnows the instant he tried to reach for it. "Those were memories, but this is a dream. And I always remember my dreams. But I don't remember this."

Maura nodded grimly. "We don't know all that much about how your dream powers work, other than they're tied to the ley line. What we _really_ don't know is how dream powers work when the dreamer has a nasty brain injury."

Ronan wanted to argue that he hadn't had any problems back in July. Back with the Pig. With Kavinsky. But he wasn't about to argue his way out of going back home. 

Besides, something about this felt very different from back then.

"What happened this summer was just a love tap compared to this," Maura said, earning her label of 'psychic.' "Plus, this is on top of July. It's going to take a long time before you're back to yourself. But you're young. So you'll probably be okay."

"Probably," he repeated dully. For the first time, Ronan was tempted to go ahead and let one of the Fox Way ladies do a card reading for him.

"Anyhow, your mother said your father built some protections into your house, and there are some measures we can take there that we really can't here. Besides, they won't let your raven in here and she's getting into all kinds of trouble back at the Barns. Let's just say that ravens and curtain tassels don't mix."

 _Atta girl,_ Ronan thought.

There was a knock on the door. A nurse came in with the wheelchair, and Mom was right behind him. She smiled, and Ronan once again marveled that she was real and here.

"Let's go home, Ronan."

* * *

Their return to the Barns was less 'joyful homecoming' and more 'screaming clusterfuck.' Ronan nearly barfed several times on the way home thanks to his new (and hopefully temporary) tendency towards motion sickness, so he couldn't enjoy being wedged between Mom and Adam in the back of the Fox Way car the way he should have. Also, even with the overcast, daylight _hurt_. He could have sworn that the light made a sound when it bounced off the snow.

Also, once they got home and it was time for Ronan to get back into bed, it quickly became apparent that they had a problem. Blue was settled in Mom and Dad's old room, Gansey was in the guest suite, and that left exactly zero downstairs bedrooms left for the third person at the Barns who couldn't manage stairs. While Mom and Matthew had a tearful reunion that hurt too damn much to look at, everyone else failed to come up with a decent solution. 

"Look, there's gotta be another room, but I can sleep on a couch or you can just put me in with the goddamned cows," Ronan grumbled. Even though the problem had been explained to him over and over, it was harder for him to grasp the idea of 'not enough bedrooms' than it should have been. And that made him even crankier than usual. "They're warm enough. Adam can have my room."

"Or your mom can have your room, and I'll keep you company in the barn," Adam said. "You shouldn't be alone and besides, I've slept worse places."

Like that fucking trailer, Ronan barely managed to not say.

"You are not sleeping in the cow barn," Mom said with the voice of sweet but implacable reason, cutting off whatever Matthew had started to say. She reached over and took Ronan's hand while keeping her other arm wrapped snugly around Matthew's shoulders. Ronan turned away abruptly at the sight of the bruise that was now purpling Matthew's cheek. He wondered just how much Mom knew about where Matthew had come from. "My old sitting room still has a cot in it, yes?"

"Oh, fu... uh, no way. Forget it. Not happening." His dreams were fucked up enough as it was without the memories that room would bring with it. 

Mom didn't even bother to acknowledge his protest. "We can rearrange things and bring in different furniture," she said with a quick sidelong glance-and-nod that made it clear that Adam and Matthew had just been volunteered for the job. "It will look like a completely new room. We can bring down some mattresses and other things from upstairs, and you, Matthew and I can all share."

He started to ask 'but what about Adam?' but Adam shook his head softly, flicking his gaze over at Ronan's mother.

Ronan saw that she was smiling, but it was as fragile as a soap bubble, and she was not even bothering to hide the sadness in her eyes. He remembered what Maura said, and gave up. If Mom wanted him and Matthew close by her, there was no way in hell he could say no. He remembered something, though, and this time he was able to clamp onto the thought before it slithered away.

"But what if I dream? You're the one who said I shouldn't be around other people."

She brushed the backs of her fingers across Ronan's right cheek - one of the few places on his face that didn't hurt. "Oh, Ronan. Do you think this is the first time I've dealt with a dreamer whose dreams had gone rogue on him? You'll be fine, my sweet boy. This place was built to be safe, and besides, I'll make sure nothing bad happens."

The funny thing was, Ronan didn't even think of not believing her.

By late afternoon, the sitting room was transformed to where Ronan could almost pretend it wasn't the same room where his mother had slept for nearly two years. The curtains were all pulled wide open to let in the soft light of an overcast sky and snow-covered ground. Old quilts and needlepoint pillows had been brought in from throughout the house, making the mattresses and cot look like they belonged right where they were. Maura had even brought in a big vase full of evergreen and holly cuttings, placing it and then adjusting a branch in a way that didn't seem to have anything to do with how it looked. All of the medical equipment was shoved into closets, and all of the rugs and fiddly bits of furniture had been cleared away to make it easier to get a wheelchair in and out.

"This is stupid. I don't get why I can't just use crutches," Ronan groused as Adam helped him around a corner. "I mean, my leg is barely broken."

"Barely broken? Is that what they mean by a spiral fracture of the tibia these days?" Adam laughed softly under his breath the way he did whenever one of his friends was being particularly stupid about something. It would be annoying as fuck if it wasn't so good to hear it again. "Well, I suppose you could try using crutches, but then your scrambled brains will make you lose your balance and you'll end up breaking something else."

Given the too-patient tone, Ronan suspected this fact was yet another thing he'd been told - and already forgotten.

"Fuck you, Parrish."

Adam's eyes narrowed mischievously and his mouth curled with intent as he leaned in close to whisper or maybe to kiss. Ronan barely felt the warmth of Adam's breath against his ear before Adam pulled away and straightened abruptly. Somehow, he still managed to look more like he was trying to hide than standing tall. The fact that his face had gone bright red didn't help.

"Oh, uh... Mrs. Lynch? Ronan and I were just... Well, I should go tell Artemus and Maura what all we learned about Gansey and what's goin' on with him," he said, pointing off in a direction that wasn't anywhere close to the right one and growing visibly more flustered as he lost control of his accent. 

Ronan wished he would just give up trying to control it at all. 

Mom came into the room, pausing to rest a hand on Adam's shoulder. Ronan could see him fight back the instinct to flinch.

"Thank you, Adam." The smile she gave him was gentle, and there was a glimmer of quiet humor amongst the grief that had settled over her like dusk. "I think Matthew went to go check on the cows. Once you've spoken to - Artemus, was it? - would you mind going after Matthew and asking him to come join us? There's no need to hurry. There are a few things I need to talk about with Ronan."

Adam shot Ronan a glance he couldn't quite read (but it seemed to be some flavor of worry), then said a gruff good-bye and left. He idly brushed a hand through Maura's evergreens, and Ronan could have sworn that the holly had more berries on it than before. Mom raised an eyebrow. Ronan shrugged but said nothing - he'd be getting the third degree about Adam sooner than he liked.

Like... right fucking now, maybe.

_FYI, Mom, I like guys. And one guy in particular. Merry Christmas?_

"Sit with me a while, Ronan," Mom said, the lilt of her accent coming back strong with the familiar request. Once upon a time, she would have sat on a couch and patted the seat next to her as she said it. Now, she pulled a rocking chair next to his wheelchair and sat down. The chair rocked back slightly as she sat, and instead of the creak of wood, they heard a glissando from a brass harp. Her face tightened in pain before settling into a more peaceful kind of sorrow. 

"I don't know if I want to burn everything of his or if I want to hold on to it forever and ever," she said. She was not crying, but her eyes were raw and puffy from earlier. 

"There's some stuff..." Ronan ticked off a few items in his mind. There weren't as many as he would have thought. A few childhood toys. The Christmas ornaments that Dad had pulled from his dreams each Sunday in Advent. Some pieces of furniture and trinkets that were almost as well-loved as family pets. Getting rid of those particular dreams of Dad's would feel too much like giving up and giving in. "But yeah. Let's get rid of all the rest of that sh... crap. Just fu... Just burn it. Have Maura and Calla do an exorcism. Or something. I don't want anyone else coming after it."

"Greenmantle," she said, and it sounded as filthy and angry as any string of curse words to ever come out of Ronan's mouth. 

"Yeah."

First Dad, then Declan. And for what? Stupid dream artifacts that stupid people would hang onto like trophies and not even fucking use? He thought he should be glad that the asshole and his asshole wife had died and had died painfully, but that didn't bring Dad or Declan back. He and Adam had known that Colin Greenmantle was bad and Piper was worse. They should have done more to stop them sooner. As soon as they'd turned Colin Greenmantle's reputation into a steaming pile of shit, he and Adam should have gone after Piper just as hard and twice as fast. 

Even before then, long before he'd ever heard of Greenmantles or Gray Men, he should have known something was wrong and that there was something to watch for. Looking back, he now saw how Dad had been more short-tempered and secretive those last few days. Ronan remembered how he himself had felt restless and on edge, like there was a big thunderstorm rolling in. He should have -

"Ronan. Stop." He hadn't said a damned word, but apparently Mom could still tell when his thoughts went spiraling down and down and down. "You weren't the one who caused their deaths, and I can tell you right now that there was less you could have done to stop things than you would like to think. This was all set in motion long before you born. If you keep on torturing yourself with might-haves and should-haves, you'll only drive yourself mad."

He glared at her. Tears stung at his eyes no matter how much he tried to hold them back or blink them away and his new inability to lock that shit down only made him angrier. He should be stronger than that. He was the one who had inherited Dad's abilities. Of _course_ he could have done more! And how on earth was he supposed to make amends for all his fuckups if he didn't know exactly how he had fucked up?

"For years I kept wondering if maybe I had just said more, if I had insisted, if I had made good on my threats to take my boys and leave, then maybe your father would have finally kept his promise to stop running with such dangerous men." She paused for a moment, face hard but eyes bright with unshed tears. Then she took a breath and started in again, her words coming out like careful footsteps on an icy path. "I nearly did leave, when I found out he had pulled Declan into his business, but I loved your father more than reason and I let him spin me a beautiful tale about how this was different than what those men in Belfast made him do and dream, and how all he was dreaming up now were pretty little toys and happy little lies. He said he knew he had to keep himself safe for my sake."

There was another long silence, then a sigh that was halfway a sob. 

"He was always such a wonderful storyteller."

Ronan could only stare as she spoke, her voice thick with grief and anger. He had never heard her speak this way about his father. Yes, she and Niall had sometimes argued and argued fiercely, but it was always rooms away from the boys. And when the arguments were over, they always seemed closer than ever, so he, Matthew, and Declan had never actually worried about those rare arguments. They were never anything more than summer squalls, here and gone in a moment and leaving sunny skies in their wake.

Learning that Mom had seriously thought about _leaving_ Dad felt like the ley line had bucked him through time and space again. Given what she was, was it even possible for her to leave him?

"What happened in Belfast?" he asked, because he thought the answer to that question would be easier to accept than the answers to all the other ones rattling around in his mind.

She went quiet again, her mouth straight and tight and her eyes fixed at some point between here and nowhere in particular. Ronan started to ask what was wrong, but she shook her head - she was thinking, or maybe just bracing herself.

"Well before I met him," she said after a good while and a few false starts, "your father was already running with a rough crowd. These men, they were a different kind of rough than... well, than the people you knew about. But they were rough all the same, and so very proud of it. Fighters, most of them, much as your father was. For as many of them fought for their precious 'cause,' more of them simply enjoyed the fight."

For as simple as they were, Mom's words about rough men with a cause turned his stomach. Ronan knew that his father had left Belfast shortly after Declan was born to get his family away from the 'troubles,' but that knowledge had only ever been a fact with no shadow and no teeth. Now it had both, and the shadow was long and the teeth were sharp.

"Mom, I..."

She shook her head and gave a soft laugh that wasn't as bitter as he would have expected. "For all his many, many faults, and for all he did some very bad things, your father was..." She sighed, short and percussive. "What he was, was too ready to listen to tales of pride and glory when he was young and foolish and even cockier than he was when you knew him. But I loved him. I loved him so much. I wouldn't have loved him if... He wasn't a bad man, Ronan. Not deep down. Not the way some of those others were. There was hope for him to become a good man, for all that he found himself doing things he had no cause to be proud of."

Ronan found himself thinking of the Gray Man, who had worked for Greenmantle, but wasn't anything like Greenmantle and who had done so much for them in the end.

(It still didn't mean that Ronan forgave him or ever would.)

"By the time your father was a regular at the pub where I worked, he was already wanting out. Even before I got to know him, I could see it in his eyes. There were many lads like him, boys who followed dreams of glory until they were in so far over their heads they could see no way out that didn't end with a bomb or a bullet."

Ronan tried to focus on what she was trying to tell him, but he kept getting hung up on the wrong parts of her story and losing track of what she was saying. 

_Well before I met him._

_Even before I got to know him._

He was desperate to ask, but did she even know what she was? That she was just as much a dream as that stupid rocking chair?

She gave a little laugh, sharp but sweet. "Well, he took a liking to me, and I think you know how the rest of _that_ story goes." 

He did, and it was good to see a glint of humor soften the sadness in her eyes - it made it feel even more like she was finally _back_. He couldn't help feeling a lift of joy at the memory of his father's old stories, but now... 

Now he knew those stories were only things that Dad had made up to make her think she was real. But she was still Mom, and those were still _her_ memories.

It was something Ronan would have to think about once his head didn't hurt so goddamn much.

"We were happy enough, and I could tell he wanted to be a better person, if such a thing were possible. There was just one problem, Ronan." She paused, and waited until he met her eyes, green and mysterious as the land his father had once loved, green and mysterious as Cabeswater itself. "Your father made friends quite easily. You know how he was. But he was the kind who made the sort of friends who just as well might be enemies, and he did something very foolish. Maybe it was on purpose or maybe it was by mistake, but he let these 'friends' of his find out about his dreams. And these friends found his dreams very useful indeed."

"Useful? Useful how?"

He was surprised at his relief when she shook her head, refusing to answer his question. 

"All you need to know, Ronan, is that they made him dream terrible things, and he was desperate for it to stop. He had me, and we had a baby on the way for all that we had barely even talked about marriage. Dreaming those things for those men? It was not what he wanted, it was never what he wanted, and while he might not have been brave enough to stop for himself, he learned that he was brave enough to stop for me. And for Declan."

The rest of the story was as inevitable as life. 

"I said we should make a new start in America or Canada, but he said he didn't know those lands or how they thought. So, instead we moved out to the country, to a place near the Mourne Mountains where he believed we would be safe. He said it was a powerful place, but at the time, I didn't know what he meant by that."

She described a place much like the Barns, a ramshackle farm with centuries-old trees and some upright stones in the far field that might have once been part of an ancient circle. It was a place where his father could re-learn how to dream things that were bright and beautiful and where he could start a family and find himself a measure of peace. At least until the rough men came sniffing around again, wondering where their dreamer had gone. 

Ronan felt like he was sitting a few feet to his own left, distanced from his mother's telling as if he was reading about her telling the story to him. At the same time, it sounded like she was telling him a story written about someone else. All of the implications about what Dad had been, about what he had done, were just a list of facts about something that had happened in a different century.

As Mom went on, what started with lush detail about a lovely Irish farm was pared down and pared down the further she got into the story. At the end, she was reciting unadorned fact, and the story was all the more horrible for it.

She told him she had just put Declan down for a nap when she heard a banging on the door. It was Billy Flanagan, and there was no reason why she shouldn't open the door for him. Billy was Niall's dearest friend, and they loved each other like brothers. There was no way he could mean them any harm.

Billy didn't say a word. He simply put two bullets into Aurora's gut, then turned and left her there on her own doorstep for Niall to find. 

She was still alive, but barely, when Niall came home. 

Mom stopped for a moment, clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap, up close to her belly. Ronan was wondering what she was not telling him, and if what he imagined Dad looked and sounded like when he found her was worse or better than what really happened. He knew enough to guess that the gut shot was meant not just to kill her, but to make her suffer, and to let Dad to know that she had suffered.

He waited for her to continue, and he knew he would dream about finding Dad out in the driveway the next time he fell asleep.

"It was too late for the doctors, much too late. But your father picked me up and he ran for the far field as if the Devil himself was after him. He ran and he ran to that far field and he carried me straight to that old stone circle. He never said a single word, not one. When he got to the circle, he placed me on the ground in the middle of the stones and he lay down next to me, my hand in his. And then I died. But..." Her hands went still in her lap. "But you can't dream when you're dead? Can you?"

Ronan's eyes went wide and his head started pounding even more fiercely and he had trouble keeping her in focus. He saw two of her for a moment: one real, one not. 

"How - "

She shook her head, and tears slipped quietly down her cheeks. "All I can tell you is that I woke up a week later in a fine stateroom on a fancy ocean liner. My son was wailing in a cot and my husband was lying next to me as still as death and nearly as cold, and I had no idea how we had all got there or where we were going, but all of us were safe and sound as if nothing had ever happened."

She closed her eyes and her face spasmed in grief. Of the three people on that boat, Ronan realized, she was now the only one left.

"Mom..."

She waved him off, and all he could do was wait until she was ready to speak again.

"I dream about that missing week sometimes. In my dream, in that week, everything is very green and very old and I am very lost. I never remember much about the dream, but I do remember that there is always a fire, and a beast, and a tower." She extended her hand and looked at the claddagh ring whose duplicate might still be in a paper bag somewhere alongside a cassette tape. She tilted her hand this way and that, and forest green light glinted deep in the heart-shaped stone. "I also remember... a proposal? I think it was a proposal. At the very least, it was a question, and a very important one. I remember saying yes, and then... I woke up. I was alive, and I didn't know how or why."

Ronan remembered his father's stories about how he and Mom had become Aurora-and-Niall. There were the everyday stories about the pretty, witty girl who worked at the local and who wouldn't give him so much as the time of day for months. Then there were the fantastic stories that were trotted out at bedtime, stories about fighting his way through unquenchable fire, facing down the most fearsome beasts, and climbing infinitely tall towers of glass to rescue his lady love and bring her home as his bride.

For years, he'd assumed one set of stories was lies and the other was true. Then, Dad had died and Mom had fallen asleep along with all the other dreams, and he assumed that both stories were nothing but more of Dad's lies. 

Perhaps, though, each set of stories was one hundred percent true.

He was still trying to figure out what this new knowledge changed when a knock on the door frame caught their attention. 

"Hey," Matthew said from the doorway. "Is it okay if I come in?"

By way of answer, Aurora just held out her arms, and Matthew went into her embrace without hesitation and stayed there for a good, long while. Ronan just watched them and missed Dad in a way he hadn't for months, not since he thought he had learned the truth about his mother and his brother. But what he had thought was the truth was only part of the truth.

So it hadn't been the truth. Not really. Not in ways that mattered.

He wondered if he ever would know the whole truth about his father. Maybe it would be better if he didn't. What Mom had told him was more than enough.

"Oh, my precious boys," Aurora said once Matthew pulled away, and Ronan knew she was talking about more than the two who were there and alive. 

"So, are the cows are waking up? Shit - do we have enough feed anymore?" Ronan asked, because of course that's what his stupid broken brain would latch onto.

"Um..." Matthew scratched the back of his head and gave a clenched-teeth not-smile. "Not really? I mean, the being awake bit. I don't know about the feed. I can check? Anyhow, a few of the cows are kind of sort of moving around a bit more, maybe? But the others..."

He hesitated a moment before opening a photo album on his phone and holding it out to Ronan. "Go ahead and scroll through. It's weird."

"This is just a picture of a cow, Matty." Bridey, to be specific, one of the few cows who had come close to something like 'pet' status. She loved watermelon and being scratched under her chin.

"That's one of the normal ones. She was asleep but she was twitching her tail, so I took a picture. I guess I should have taken a video, huh? Uh, but anyway, keep going."

He did. It took him a moment to see what was wrong because at first he thought it was just his concussion fucking with his vision again. 

From what he could see, only a few of the cows looked normal. The rest of them looked like they'd been badly photoshopped into Matthew's pictures. They looked flat, or like the light was coming from the wrong angle or had gone completely diffuse. It took him longer than it should have to notice that none of these cows cast any kind of shadow. Some of them - the more generic Jersey milkers who didn't have names or personalities that Ronan could remember - looked weirdly grainy and desaturated as well, like they'd come off of a cheap printer.

It reminded him of the night horrors his older self had un-created, and how they'd gone flat and vague before they burned up.

"I don't get it," he said because what the fuck else was there to say? He couldn't exactly go out there and check for himself.

Matthew frowned. "But you're the dream expert, right? You can't tell what's happening to them? Or why?" He sounded more anxious about it than Ronan would have expected. "You don't think it's hurting them, do you?"

Mom looked like she wanted to say something, but then she stopped herself abruptly and studied her boys with puzzled consideration.

"They don't look like they're hurting. Adam can take a look at them. He's good at figuring this sh...stuff out." They'd come close to it before, and now it seemed like Adam might be able to do even more.

"You've met Adam, right? He's really cool. You'll like him," Matthew said to Mom. He sounded a little too defensive, and Ronan could see Mom's eyes glint with humor as she put two and two together.

"I have met him. He seems like a _very_ nice young man," she said in a way that made Ronan want to melt straight through the floor.

Ronan glared at Matthew, but he did not miss the way the corners of Mom's mouth twitched.

The teasing, once enough time had passed that teasing could be a thing again, would be _merciless_. 

"But you don't think that..." Matthew's gaze flicked to Mom and quickly away again, and that anxiety was there again. The smudge-like bruise on his cheek drew Ronan's eye and would not let it go.

"Think what?"

"That me and Mom... What's happening to the cows isn't going to happen to us, is it?"

"What? Oh, fuck no!"

"Ronan!" Mom chided, but that wasn't important. Matthew being scared was.

"Look. You and Mom, that's different, okay? It's got to be!"

Mom gave him a look that said he was in trouble, and he knew that it was for much more than the swearing. 

"He knows, Mom. I'm sorry, but he knows. About the dreams, and about himself, and about you. We're not hiding any of that stuff from each other. Not anymore. No more secrets, okay?"

The 'you're in trouble' look turned to something more puzzled, and then pained. "No more secrets," she echoed.

Matthew fidgeted his hands together and hunched his shoulders, looking aside in a way that reminded Ronan so much of Noah it amazed him he hadn't seen it before. "I know I wasn't exactly, well, born. I figured it out and made Ronan tell me the truth. So don't be mad at him?"

"I'm not mad," she said, but she didn't sound happy, either. She turned back to Ronan. "Your father always swore you didn't remember what happened when he asked why you dreamed a little brother."

"I _didn't_ remember. Declan told me, later. And at first, I thought Matthew was just a dream." He squared his jaw, daring her to contradict him. "But he's not. He's a real person. Just like you. _Exactly_ like you."

Mom's eyes went wide and she leaned forward in her rocker, setting off another glissando, this one startling Matthew. 

"But yesterday you said you - " Matthew started.

"Look. I'm not a hundred percent sure what I said, all right?" Ronan snapped, pointing to the bandage that covered his left temple and cheekbone. He thought he remembered the talk with Matthew, but some pieces were missing and the rest were in the wrong order.

"You promised you'd tell me when you did figure it out," Matthew said, and Ronan assumed he was telling the truth and that such a promise had been made.

"Well, I have, so sit the hell down."

Matthew's face lit up with expectation, but it quickly faded to something far more nervous. Ronan sighed and gestured for him to sit down on one of the tarted up mattresses. 

"It's not bad news. Relax."

"Should I be here for this?" Aurora asked, and Ronan urgently wanted to say 'no' and desperately wanted to say 'yes,' but it wasn't his call to make.

Matthew thought for a moment, then shook his head. If Mom's feelings were hurt, it didn't show. She simply kissed each of them on the forehead in turn. Then she took each of them by the hand at the same time, giving a quick little squeeze as if reminding herself that they were real.

"I understand, dear heart. Perhaps I should go see how everything is going with our guests. That Welsh woman is certainly..." She sighed. "Well, she's certainly _something_."

Ronan and Matthew both bit back their laughter. Some other time, they might have cracked up the instant she left the room, but not today.

Once she was gone, Ronan gave Matthew a grossly abbreviated and hopefully not too inaccurate version of what Artemus had told him about souls trapped on the ley line and what happened to them. He explained that with a dreamer's help, some souls (he said nothing about Mom's and Adam's, because those weren't his stories to tell) could simply come back exactly as they were, or close to it. Others, like the one that had become Matthew, could not. They were too worn or damaged or whatever and had to start over. He told Matthew about meeting his younger self and telling him what to do and how he'd somehow made himself forget what had happened.

At least, that's what he thought he said. He kept drifting off on tangents and forgetting what he was saying mid-sentence. But by the end of it, Matthew looked less confused than Ronan would have expected.

"So, you found me? You didn't just make me up?"

"Yeah. Which is why I don't think whatever is happening to those cows isn't going to happen to you. And I can't tell you why, but I don't think it will happen to Mom, either. Besides, you two are awake. They're not. Like I said, you're a real boy. Congratulations, Pinocchio."

He thought again about the replacement Prokopenko, and wondered if Kavinsky would have gone to the trouble of bringing the real Proko back if he could have, or if the sick fuck actually preferred his forgery. 

And if Proko-fake-o hadn't broken his neck when his car crashed, would he have just started going flat and faded like those cows?

"Weird."

"That's the understatement of the year," Ronan snarled.

Matthew was quiet again for a while, and Ronan wasn't sure how much was sinking in and how much was being shunted off to the wonderful world of denial. Then:

"Did you know me? I mean, before I was me?"

"Uh...?"

"Sorry, sorry. It's just you know how I told you there used to be things that I could sort of remember? Things that hadn't happened yet? To you?" Matthew laughed nervously, patting at his own hair then touching his bruised cheek and wincing when it still hurt. "It's weird. I know, I said that already, but it's like having a song stuck in my head and I know I know the song but I couldn't tell you what song it is or how the words go. So, do you?"

"Hm?"

"Know who I used to be?"

Ronan knew he could duck and deflect, but that would be as good as a 'yes,' and he refused to flat out lie. Besides, he had promised Matthew that he would be honest, and that was different from simply not lying.

"Yes."

There were a few moments of silence as Matthew mulled something over. If Ronan was lucky, he would get distracted and then maybe ask if they had any more Pop Tarts.

Instead, Matthew asked another question. "And I'm happier now than I was before?"

Ronan didn't know much about Noah before his death, but that Noah wasn't the Noah who was his friend, the Noah whose entire existence - such as it was - hinged on a horrible betrayal.

"I think so."

"Like I said, there's things I kind of remember." He touched his cheek again, and his eyes were fixed somewhere that wasn't in this room. "And some of them I know I don't want to remember."

"So you don't want to know who you used to be." It wasn't quite a question, because Ronan thought he already knew the answer.

Matthew shook his head vehemently. "If you tell me, I'll never not know again. Maybe someday I'll ask you to tell me, but right now I just want to think of me as me, not as someone who used to be someone else."

The surge of love Ronan felt for his little brother felt like it might crack right through his ribs.

"It's entirely up to you, Matty," he said as if it didn't really mean anything.

"And you won't tell anyone else?"

Ronan nearly balked at that, because he knew Adam and Gansey and Blue all missed Noah desperately, but he got it. Matthew was becoming friends with Blue and Gansey and Adam on his own terms, and he had probably figured out he had once known them just as he had figured out he had once known Ronan. It made sense that he wanted to have them see him as Matthew, not as someone else. Or worse, see him as a reminder of how that someone else was gone. 

Well, if that's what Matthew wanted, then it stood to reason it was what Noah would have wanted as well. 

But that was enough thinking about that. Ronan would find some way to let the others know that he learned that Noah was really and truly okay. If pressed for details, he could say that Noah had 'moved on,' or some other sentimental shit like that. It was a true statement. He thought it was also an honest one.

"Nope. I won't tell a soul. You're my punk-ass little brother, and that's all anyone needs to know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding Niall Lynch: Aurora's opinion of him is much more favorable than mine is, especially given the headcanon backstory for him I've presented here. Also, it's going to take some time for Ronan to process what Aurora told him about Niall's past. We'll see some of it in this story, but it's the kind of thing that's going to take him _years_
> 
> Next chapter: Ronan talks to Blue, and we wrap things up with Gansey.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan brings something odd out of a dream. Blue and Ronan have a talk. A phone is destroyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **NOTE:** If it's been a while since you've caught up with this story, chapter 17 was posted on Aug. 26, so make sure you've read that chapter before reading this one. After this, there's only one more chapter, which is more a proper epilogue. Depending on how quickly edits go, it should go up on Aug. 27 or Aug. 28. Again, thank you all for your patience as I bring this beast to a close.

After Matthew went to go ask Adam about the cows, Ronan slept for another twelve hours, waking up at the ass-crack of dawn on December twenty-third. He thought he remembered people waking him up to make sure he _could_ wake up, but he couldn't be sure.

Anyhow, he was now fully awake and the sky was only barely not dark. Chainsaw was perched on his chest, dutifully keeping watch while Mom and Matthew slept. She cocked her head and blinked at him a few times as if waiting for instructions. Or maybe she just wanted a snack.

"I wish I'd made you a better conversationalist, because I'm going to be bored as shit until everyone wakes up."

Chainsaw took that as her cue to utter a brain-splitting _KERAH!_ that just about blasted Mom into orbit. Matthew slept on, damn him.

Chainsaw looked far too proud of herself for waking up someone to keep Ronan company.

Mom, Ronan was sorry to learn, was not Chainsaw's biggest fan. It took some wheedling and some shameless pleading of his status as a helpless invalid to keep his bird from being banished from the house.

(He made a mental note to dream a little service animal vest for her. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with something that wouldn't screw up her ability to fly.)

After a breakfast that he didn't want to eat (post-traumatic vertigo could go fuck itself with a rusty razor), the morning passed in a series of half-forgotten intervals between fitful naps that just sort of happened whether Ronan wanted them to or not. 

According to Calla, the doctors had said that the fatigue should gradually improve over time, and by time, they were talking fucking _months_. She told him that the doctors wanted to get him up and on crutches as soon as he wasn't in danger of keeling over, because staying mobile would help him maintain strength and flexibility and would keep things from getting too stiff.

Also according to Calla, they had told him all this before he left the hospital, but he couldn't remember a single word of it.

"You're worried, aren't you?" Adam asked him around mid-day. There was room for Adam to curl up alongside him on the full-sized mattress that had been set up in Mom's old sick room. More often than not, he was there whenever Ronan woke from one of his naps.

Ronan grunted something that could have been a yes, could have been a maybe.

"I'd be terrified," Adam said with the kind of calm that said he was anything but. Yeah, he would be freaked out about something happening to that big brain of his, and Ronan wouldn't blame him one bit.

"I'm holding on to stuff that happened today pretty much okay. Sort of. I'm more worried about seeing Sargent again."

Adam gave him a puzzled look that suddenly shifted to something too close to pity for Ronan's taste. He knew at once what it all meant.

"Are you shitting me, Parrish?"

Adam sighed. "You only saw her for a couple minutes yesterday morning. I guess you were still pretty out of it. Anyhow, she told she was glad you weren't dead." He shrugged. "She sounded sincere about it. Mostly."

"That's big of her," he muttered. Now that something like it had been offered, the idea of just being _forgiven_ didn't sit well with him. In some ways, it would feel better if she stayed mad at him. Then, he wouldn't _owe_ her.

"I think bringing me back and helping find out how we can save Gansey may have unruffled a few feathers. But I hope you're ready to apologize," he said, and the implied 'you'd better be' was impossible to miss.

Ronan once again grunted something that wasn't exactly an agreement. 

He didn't remember falling asleep, but then he found himself unable to move with another warped piece of dark red glass in his hands.

Adam waited until Ronan could grumble an assent before taking the glass to look at it.

"Huh," was all he said.

"You know what it is?"

Adam shook his head. "Nope. Hey, it's getting towards lunchtime. You hungry?" 

He grabbed Ronan's wrist and got an arm behind Ronan's back as he struggled to sit up. He was quick to let go once Ronan was upright, probably remembering Ronan's hatred of showing weakness, but Ronan shifted things so he was clasping Adam's hand before Adam could pull away completely.

"I missed you so damned much, Parrish." 

Adam had been gone for only a week, but Ronan hadn't known it would only be a week. So it had felt like forever. Maybe, like Maura had said about Mom, part of him still believed he should be grieving Adam the way he was grieving Declan. Maybe part of him would always believe that.

Adam gazed at him, blue eyes hooded. The green flecks reminded Ronan that in some ways, that week _had_ been forever for Adam. "I... I think I missed being me. And I didn't know it for a long time, but a big part of being me was remembering you. And you helped me do that when I needed it most. You remembered for me, and for as long as you need me to, I can remember for you. I mean, if you want me to, that is."

Adam looked down and away at that last part. Ronan just sat still, reeling, while it all sank in. Even though Adam was clearly waiting for him to say something, it took Ronan a while to get the words out. He squeezed Adam's hand hard, and waited until Adam finally looked back up at him.

"I love you, too, asshole."

It wasn't what he meant to say, but he meant every word of it.

The next time Ronan woke up, he was fuzzy on whether or not lunch had actually happened, and the slant of the light said it was late afternoon. He also had another piece of red glass in his hands. Adam was still there (or was there once again) curled up against Ronan's uninjured side. His hand rested right over Ronan's heart - not splayed to feel the heartbeat, but clutching Ronan's shirt as if to keep himself from drifting away. Or maybe it was to keep Ronan from drifting away.

Mom dozed in a chair nearby. Her eyes were redder and rawer than they had been that morning, and Ronan wished he could do something to make everything hurt less. But he couldn't.

Instead, he just concentrated on the warm weight of Adam's hand on his chest and wondered when he would stop feeling so fucking guilty about being so fucking happy when part of him was still grieving so fiercely.

"You awake?" Adam whispered.

"Sort of."

"You were out for another couple of hours. I spoke to Artemus and Gwenllian."

"I bet that was fun."

Adam grimaced. "I know I should feel bad for her, but..."

"Yup." But in the end, Ronan and Adam both owed her a shit-ton. If she hadn't played that stupid song about stupid Janet...

"Anyhow, we're going into Cabeswater tomorrow. And we're going to save Gansey."

Ronan grinned like a shark and sat up as a thrill of adrenaline coursed through him. They were going to do this. They were going to pull this off, and they - 

His smile flattened. "Wait. 'We' doesn't include me, does it?" It couldn't, but knowing why didn't help.

Adam shrugged and inclined his head towards Ronan's broken leg. "We don't have time to let you heal. Well, Gansey doesn't have time."

He was right. Of course he was right. Ronan had seen those vines, knew what they were doing to Gansey. But he still clenched his fists over and over in the blankets until he felt the heat of anger begin to abate.

Adam reached out, pausing and pulling his hand back slightly before finally resting it on Ronan's back. He ran it in soft circles until Ronan sighed and slumped forwards. 

"I hate this."

"I know," Adam said.

"Is the maggot... I mean, I guess Sargent is stuck here, too?"

Adam nodded. Then he raised an eyebrow, asking a silent question.

"I'll talk to her," Ronan grumped.

"Good. She's pissed about not being able to go, too, and she's letting everyone know it. Hell, she's probably going to write a letter to Congress about it. So the two of you can celebrate Christmas Eve by hanging out and being pissed off at everything and everyone." He sounded far too amused.

"Fuck you, Parrish." 

"Mmmm... Not until you're out of that cast, Lynch." He cackled as Ronan took a swipe at him and he ducked away with all the arrogance of a man whose mobility and balance were not compromised.

Ronan fell asleep again shortly after that. He woke up in time for a late dinner that felt weirdly unreal, and afterwards he drifted in a sort of incoherent wakefulness until sleep finally claimed him. 

The next time he woke up, he was holding something, but it wasn't one of those weird bits of red glass. He had pulled three of them out of his dreams, so he supposed it was time for a different kind of object. This time, he had a stiff piece of paper in his hand.

Someone plucked it from his fingers while he was still paralyzed.

"Aha! See what our dreamer has pulled from his dreams! 'Tis the lady fair, the lady undone, the lady of the borders."

Great. One hundred percent fucking great.

"See here how she's a pale, small shadow, so small, so small," Gwenllian crooned. "But she has been sending out a beacon, a reminder of your promise. So strong she is, getting her message through all the borders and barriers in this place. Hmm... Now is a promise still a promise if it is a silent one? Do words need to be spoken to have power? Do dreamers - "

"Out. And give me that!" Calla snapped.

Oh, thank the sweet Baby Jesus.

He heard heavy footsteps as Gwenllian stomped out in full flounce.

"There is not enough booze in the world for me to put up with her," Calla snarled out. "Hey. Shouldn't you be awake by now?"

"Urgh."

"One grunt for yes, two for no."

"Bite me." He sat up, wincing as the motion set his head to pounding. "Yeah, I should be all the way awake by now, but I'm not. Wanna guess why?"

Calla nodded grimly. Ronan figured he was lucky that he hadn't brought anything dangerous out of his dreams. Maybe Mom and the psychics did know how to deal with these things.

"Do you have any clue what Our Lady of Bad Hair Days was talking about with beacons and promises and what-the-hell ever?" Calla asked.

"Who the hell knows. I'm trying to remember what promises I've made." He had promised Gansey he wouldn't do anything stupid. That one, he'd broken. He had promised Matthew that he would tell the truth about where Matthew had come from. That one, he had kept. That was two promises, which meant there was probably a third. "So far, I'm coming up with bupkis."

"Hmm." Calla lifted an eyebrow and held out the card Gwenllian had taken from him. "Do you have any idea what this means?"

He was half-expecting to see Adam's Magician card, but while it looked like a card from Adam's deck, it wasn't the Magician. It was the High Priestess - sort of.

While recognizable, the image was unfinished. Parts of it were fully inked and colored, but other parts of it were nothing but the line drawing. The card's number and title appeared to have been sketched in with pencil, and he could see the ruler lines used to keep the lettering even.

The other weird thing was that the Priestess looked more like a scared little girl than a powerful, grown-ass woman.

"Nope." Something about it tickled at the back of his mind, but whatever it was skittered away when he tried to pin it down.

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"Maybe."

She gave him a hard glare, then grinned. "I suppose it's nice to know that some things never change." She thought for a moment, then sat down on the edge of his mattress without invitation. "You know, there's something I've never quite figured out about you."

"What?"

"You do what a lot of people would call magic. You _make_ things that _are_ magical. But you freak the hell out at the idea of having us do a reading."

He wasn't sure what to say. Part of it was that back when his dreaming was a secret, he was terrified that they'd find him out. The other part of it he couldn't think about directly, not yet, not without cold flashes of cramped pews and terrified prayers, demanding to know what he was and shit-scared that someone might tell him.

"Would you freak out if I asked you to draw a card for me now?" she asked plainly. 

He sneered. "No."

She stared. Said nothing. Waited.

He gave in. "Look, there's no... Yeah. Sure. Whatever. I'll do it."

She let out a soft huff of laughter. It wasn't completely unkind. "Your enthusiasm is noted."

Calla pulled a black silk pouch out of her giant purple purse, then tipped a well-worn tarot deck out of the bag and into her hand. She shuffled the cards a few times.

"Normally I'd ask you to do this part as well, but I wouldn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities.

"Bite me."

"You're repeating insults. You really aren't feeling well, are you?" She stopped shuffling and held out the deck. "Cut the deck and pick a card."

He did. The card was more garishly colored than Adam's more sketch-like deck, and the image was so busy it hurt to look at.

"Now tell me. Are you in any way surprised that you just drew the High Priestess?"

"Nope," he said, popping the 'p.'

She studied him for a good long while, and he thought she was maybe fighting to keep her calm.

"Aren't you going to tell me what it means?" he asked.

Calla let out a short, sharp breath and dragged her free hand down her face. Then she snapped her fingers at him, signaling him to give back the card.

"Well, the High Priestess is the card most associated with dreaming, so there's part of me that wonders if it's _your_ card the way the Magician is Adam's, which means the cards are giving us the equivalent of a dial tone. And if you say anything even the least bit snarky about being associated with a feminine card, I swear to you I will turn your entire life into a hellscape of pain and terror."

Ronan handed the card over without a word. But he did smirk to let her know what kinds of things he might be thinking.

"You are a horrible human being," she informed him as she tucked the card back into the deck. "Entertaining, and you have good taste in booze, but you are horrible. Anyhow, I'm not sure I _can_ read this card for you. There's too much..." She squiggled her hand through the air. 

"Static?"

"Baggage. Maybe it's your card, but you're not the person I associate with it. I wonder... No. Forget it." Her gruffness told him he wasn't getting more from her on that topic. "So, you and Blue are stuck here together today."

"Is this some kind of shovel talk? I already got one from Maura."

"Oh, I _bet_ you did." She gave him a shark-sharp grin. "I would _love_ to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. Don't expect her to forgive you any time soon. Me, all I'm going to tell you is not to give Blue any more grief about that damned list."

"Maura already told me Declan wasn't on there."

"I wasn't talking about Declan. I'm talking about Gansey."

"She should have - "

Calla held up a hand, cutting him short. "What Blue should or shouldn't have done is for her to work out. With Gansey. Not you. There are damned good reasons why we have rules around who we tell about what's on that list and how much we tell them."

Ronan thought about Matthew and secrets that weren't his to tell, no matter how much someone else would want to hear what he knew.

He cleared his throat. When he spoke, he kept his gaze on his hands and the card he had pulled out of his dreams. "Dad was all caught up in that ley line shit. If I asked you if his name was in a notebook from a couple of years ago, would you tell me?"

"Are you asking if it is?"

"I'm asking you if you'd tell me."

She looked at him from under hooded eyes. He wondered what she saw.

"What I'd do is ask you if you really wanted to know. And what you would do if you _did_ know."

He was just saying 'of course' to the first part of her statement when the second part knocked him for a loop.

What _would_ he do? From the sound of things, the list always told the truth, even if it sometimes told it in a misleading way. 

He knew all about how _that_ worked.

Gansey had actually died for a moment before Glendower's favor brought him back - for a price. Knowing Dad had been fated to die would be something he could never unknow. It would just be one more thing to torture himself with.

Especially now that he knew that in some cases, some very rare cases, death could be undone if the circumstances were just right and if you were strong enough to do what needed to be done.

"Well, I don't have a single fucking clue. So it's probably a good thing I'm not going to ask, then."

"Probably." She stood up and pointed at the card in Ronan's hand. "Mind if I take this with me?"

He held it up between two fingers. "Knock yourself out."

"Like you did?" she said with a smirk.

"Ha ha ha. That's right, mock the invalid."

"Well, yes, because right now I can outrun you and not even break a sweat."

Ronan laughed at that, and something about it startled a smile out of Calla. Then, she looked at the card again with a sorrow that gentled her face. 

"You're not as awful as I used to think. Thanks for this, by the way," she said, waving goodbye with the card.

"Whatever."

He settled back and began drifting back into sleep. He hoped someone would wake him before everyone went to get Gansey.

He wished there was some way he could go with them. Maybe he could stay awake until they left. He fought to stay awake, but stray thoughts kept luring him towards sleep.

His older self, standing on a rock in the middle of a dry creek bed, and would that even happen now?

The ley line was fixed, but what did that mean?

He didn't know what it meant, that card that he had pulled from his dream. The Lost Priestess or something like that.

It was half-drawn. Or half erased? Yes. Half-erased. That was right. Becoming less.

Like those strange people he kept seeing in his dreams. Half-erased. Fading. He didn't know what they were. Who they were.

He didn't know what those chips of red glass were. What they meant. 

A beacon.

Glass the color of wine.

A promise.

Glass the color of pomegranate.

 _Take me with you_ , Orphan Girl cried. He would, he really would, he promised he would, he would pull her into the waking world...

His eyes slammed open, and for just a moment Ronan was very, very awake.

"Holy. Fucking. Shit."

He struggled to keep hold of the wakefulness because he needed to write this shit down, but it was a losing battle.

He needed to talk to Adam. He just hoped he would remember what he'd figured out when he woke up.

* * *

On Christmas Eve day, Ronan and Blue were both parked in the living room by the fire, trapped together in the world's most uncomfortable silence while waiting for the others to get back or for Gansey to wake.

Ronan was pissed to learn that everyone had left an hour before dawn, while he was still sound asleep. He wondered if Adam had come in to wake him to say goodbye but if he had, Ronan couldn't remember it.

He was also pissed to learn that Mom and Matthew had gone along with everyone else, like it was all some big Christmas resurrection party or something.

Aside from Blue, the only other person at the barns - other than Gansey, of course - was Jimi. At the moment she was taking a break from watching over Gansey and was making something suspiciously herbal in the kitchen while singing along to a Mahalia Jackson Christmas album she'd dug out of Dad's collection. Ronan tried not to resent the fact that Chainsaw seemed to prefer Jimi's company to his. It was probably because Jimi had better access to snacks.

As for Blue, she was knitting away at top speed on something shapeless and yellow, and occasionally giving him sidelong looks. The _tick-tick-tick_ of her needles was unsettling for reasons he would rather not think about.

They both knew an apology or maybe something more than an apology was needed, but Ronan was procrastinating by writing down the painfully few scraps he remembered from last night's realization and trying to make sense of it.

Maybe he could tell Blue what he thought it was about as part of his apology, and it could be one hell of a peace offering. Or it could make things infinitely worse. Especially if he was wrong.

His brain was kind of broken, after all.

After a while, his head hurt too much to keep going, so he tossed his notebook aside.

Blue looked up from her knitting at the sudden noise, and he hoped he was just imagining the slight flinch. He probably wasn't, though, which told him he'd put this off far too long already.

"Okay, Sargent. I'll just rip the bandaid off and tell you that I'm really fucking sorry for losing my shit with you the other day."

He didn't need to be able to see her clearly to know that she was raising an eyebrow at him.

"And?" she prompted.

He honestly didn't know what to say next. That he was really, _really_ sorry? That she shouldn't be surprised that he fucked up? That she should have just fucking told him the truth in the first place? That everyone he got close to got hurt eventually, so what made her any different?

As usual, 'sorry' didn't mean shit.

He sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, hoping that would make the headache go away. It didn't.

"And I don't know how to fix any of this shit, and I don't know if I can. But I want to. And that's the truth."

"You keep saying that you never lie," she said quietly, but it was an observation, not a judgment.

"I grew up around too many liars," he muttered. "But yeah, I mean it. I want to make things right. So, for what it's worth, I'm genuinely sorry."

"And for what it's worth, I'm genuinely considering your apology," she said, dry as the fucking Sahara.

"Thanks." He wasn't sure what else to say that would actually mean anything more than that.

She was quiet again for a while, and he could see her jaw working as if she were grinding her next words between her teeth. Then she sat up straight and faced him dead on, waiting until she had his full attention.

"You want to know what really pisses me off right now, Ronan? It's that there's a part of me that feels like I should just tell you that it's all okay and that I understand and that I'm just going to let you off the hook. And I _hate_ that I feel guilty about not doing just that."

But that wasn't what he wanted. Not at all. "Sargent, I - "

"No! I'm not finished. The least you can do is hear me out, Ronan. I can come up for excuse after excuse for how you acted even though there _is_ no excuse, but that's not the worst of it. What I hate is that you scared me, and that I'm still scared and still angry, and in some ways I feel like I don't have a right to be because I keep thinking that if you hadn't blown up and taken off the way you did, we wouldn't have gotten Adam back and Gansey would never wake up again, but..."

She was close to tears, but she fought it off. He heard her take a deep breath before she spoke again. "But even with all that, and even though I'm grateful and I guess I do forgive you, it's going to be a long time before I feel like I can really trust you again. I wish I could just say it was all okay and mean it, but I can't."

Ronan thought about that for a moment. It hurt more than he expected, and he wasn't sure why.

"I can live with that," he said, because he could. It hurt, but it was fair. More than fair.

"I am sorry I didn't tell you about Gansey," she said, and it took him a moment to catch up with what she was saying. "And no, that's not an apology 'sorry.' It's me being sorry there wasn't a better way. Or, maybe I'm just sorry any of this happened in the first place."

She didn't say anything about not telling _Gansey_ about Gansey, and it just about killed him not to throw that in her face.

If she noticed his mood darkening, she gave no sign of it.

"Your mom said there were rules or some shit about what you're allowed to say about the list?"

She nodded. "Some people, especially our older clients, and I mean the _really_ old ones, want to know. I guess they figure the end is close anyway, and want to know when it's finally time to take care of any unfinished business or take that one last chance to put things to rights, but..." 

"But?"

She took a deep breath. "But it's different, when someone's young. No one who's young wants to know, not that I've ever heard of. The worst thing about seeing Gansey's spirit that night was that I knew what it meant and how it would end - for him, dying, and for me, not being able to do anything to stop it. Part of me wanted to tell him, thought he deserved to know, but Mom and Calla and Persephone kept reminding me why I shouldn't, how knowing what was going to happen would just ruin what time he had. I didn't get it at first, but the more I got to..."

She didn't say 'love him,' but they way her voice cut off with a sharp sniff was enough for him to guess what she probably meant. He found himself wishing he could put a hand on her shoulder or some shit like that, but it was too much of a pain to wheel over. Besides, he didn't want to know if she would flinch away from his touch.

"There were times I would have given anything to _un-_ know what I knew," she went on. "Because it meant that every minute I could have enjoyed just being with him, there was always, _always_ part of me wondering 'how long do we have?' or 'how much is it going to hurt?'"

"I get it," he said, thinking about how he might never be able to tell her the whole truth about Noah, or the way Mom had talked _around_ certain details of Dad's story. It wasn't the same, but it was close enough that what she said made sense.

He wasn't sure what he should do next. He'd been forgiven, but the withholding of trust made him feel like he wasn't in debt for it, somehow. 

"They're taking an awful long time," Blue said after a long silence that wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as before. She frowned down at her knitting, then pulled the needles out and started ripping out stitches.

Ronan checked his phone. He had already checked it more that morning than he had in the past two months. Once again he verified that it was on, and the ringer was - for once - not set to silent. There were no texts, no messages, no missed calls. They had both jumped at a text alert an hour ago, but it was from Gansey's phone - which they would have to deal with at some point. The missed calls and texts from his family were starting to rack up. "What time did they leave?"

She shuddered in disgust. " _Early._ Mom said they wanted to be in Cabeswater in time for sunrise, don't you remem-" She stopped talking so abruptly he heard her teeth click. Her face blotched bright red.

"Take a fucking guess," he snapped. Christ, it had been less than two full days, and already this was beyond old.

"I'm sorry about that, too," she said quietly.

"Yeah. That's two of us." It had been not quite three days, and he was tired. Tired of everything hurting, tired of feeling like his brain was swimming in molasses, and just plain tired. "It's worth it, though, if that's what it took to get Adam back."

"And Gansey, if this all works," Blue added.

Ronan held up crossed fingers. Saying anything felt too much like courting a jinx.

"I haven't talked to Adam much since he got back. He's been with you most of the time, even when you're asleep," Blue said. Ronan raised his eyebrows - he hadn't known that last part. "He told me a little about what happened, about the deal he made, but I haven't really figured out what it means. Have you?"

He knew better than to shake his head, so he just shrugged. So far, Adam seemed like Adam. Not quite as prickly, perhaps. Or maybe it was that he seemed a little less likely to vanish into his own head. Or it could have been that he didn't seem as much like he was constantly on edge waiting for the next bad thing that was sure to happen.

Someday, he might ask Adam what he remembered of the three trials. Or maybe he wouldn't.

She turned back to her knitting for a moment, tugging at and stretching it rather than working on it. He could see her debate whether or not to say what was on her mind. "I never did tell you what Adam said to me, when I saw him last."

"Does it matter? He's back," Ronan snapped. Part of him still remembered the rawness of missing Adam and how he had wished he could dig his hand in between his ribs and rip his own heart out.

Sargent, of course, saw through his bullshit. He needed to know what Adam thought was so important for him to hear.

"He told me to tell you that everything was going to be okay."

And it was okay. Mostly. Adam was back. Mom was back. Gansey would be back if everything went well. 

But Declan was gone and Dad was gone and so many things that Ronan thought he knew about Dad, about his dreams, were so different. So maybe that's why the words hit him as hard as if he'd heard them back when he thought that everything was miles from okay. He closed his eyes and wished that the fucking concussion didn't make it so hard to keep his shit together. He had already lost his shit in front of Blue twice in the past few days. Once when he broke down sobbing. Then again when he had maybe broken their growing friendship past repair. He didn't care that things came in threes - he wasn't going to break down in front of her again.

Maybe it was a psychic impulse or maybe it was just an accident of timing, but Jimi swayed into the living room right then, singing off-key but not unpleasantly about how _a star stood still, on yonder hill._ Chainsaw perched comfortably on Jimi's shoulder, not looking like she felt the slightest bit guilty about being a faithless little shit.

Jimi had a mug in each hand, and when she handed Ronan his mug, he got a whiff of chocolate and mint. He hoped that meant it had been laced with peppermint schnapps, but probably not, the way his luck had been going. He took another sniff of the cocoa and let it remind him of a simpler time before so many things had been broken.

"Mmm... You two look so cozy and relaxed here in front of the fire," Jimi said as she waited for Blue to put aside her ruined knitting and take the cocoa. "So nice and peaceful."

Ronan and Blue both kept straight faces until she left to go see to Gansey, and then they cracked up.

"I thought she was supposed to be psychic. 'Peaceful?' 'Cozy?' _Us?_ What the fuck is she smoking?"

"You really don't want to know," Blue said, and she sounded like she meant it. "She's got a good heart, though."

That also sounded sincere, and Ronan had a glimmer of memory of something Maura told him about Jimi - back in the hospital? - but he couldn't catch hold of it.

Ronan checked his phone again, this time to see what the weather app said about sunrise. 7:16. And now it was 10:05.

"Shit. They've been at it for almost three hours. How long is this supposed to take?" 

Blue cast a glance towards Gansey's room. He knew it must be killing her to not be in there, but both Maura and Artemus had thought that her 'mirror' qualities might make things harder rather than easier, so she was to stay well away from the room and all its sigils and protections. "I just wish I knew what was going on or how it was all going."

Ronan grunted in agreement. He thought about the vines surrounding Gansey in the deep dreaming, down in the deepest heart of Cabeswater, and he wondered just what it would take and how much it would cost to root them out.

"You're worried about them, aren't you?" Blue asked.

"Aren't you?" he retorted.

"Of course I am! But Mom and Artemus and Calla know what they're doing, and so does Adam."

"Yeah, but you left Mom and Matthew off that list. It's not like they're psychic, and sorry, but going into a forest that puts them into a fucking brain fog doesn't exactly seem smart!"

Blue blinked a couple of times as if a thought struck her. "Maybe it doesn't, not any more. Your mom was able to _leave_ Cabeswater, remember?"

Leave and then walk for miles in ass-cold weather along an icy county highway where people drove like lunatics. It was only stupid luck that Calla had been the one to spot her. All of the 'might have beens' that could have happened made him feel like throwing up.

"Like it would have killed them to wait a few days before checking it out," he snarled.

"You can try texting Matthew. Um, you may not remember," she said, with an annoying hint of apology, "but it sounded like he and your mom were going to stand guard or something, and not actually get involved unless they had to."

In which case, they should have been calling or texting with updates, right?

"Speaking of your mother..."

Ronan heard the smug, teasing tone, but didn't think much of it as he raised his mug to take another swig of hot chocolate.

"...how does she like your tattoo?"

Ronan coughed so hard thanks to the scalding hot liquid he had just inhaled that it took him longer than it should have to hear the racket that had kicked up outside.

A chorus of croaking and cawing erupted from out of nowhere, followed by the rushing of hundreds upon hundreds of wings.

"Ronan! Look!" Blue had turned her wheelchair so she was facing the window.

Before he could turn to look, Chainsaw swooped out of Gansey's room, calling out gleefully. Jimi followed after as fast as she could. She couldn't stop Chainsaw from battering at the door, so she opened it before Ronan could even think to ask what the hell was going on. 

The sound of ravens poured in like a flood. Outside, the world was a universe of black birds and white snow and the rushing of wings.

It was loud, louder than anything had a right to be, but then a soft voice cut through it all with an authority that could not be ignored for all that it was barely a whisper.

"Jane?"

_Rex corvus parate regis corvi._

_Make way for the Raven King._

For a moment, Ronan found himself trying to stand, because otherwise, how was he supposed to bow to his king, but then there was a delighted cry of 'Gansey!' as the ravens went silent and Jimi closed the door. Then, instead of a king, Ronan saw his best friend standing there like an idiot in those stupid pinstripe pajamas, squinting because of course he had left his glasses in the bedroom. 

"Merry fucking Christmas, Dick!" Ronan said gleefully. "We got you a god-damned miracle. I hope it's the right size, because we can't return it."

Gansey got close enough to get a look at Ronan and once his jaw un-dropped, said, "Good lord! What hap- No. No. On second thought, I don't want to know.

"Good. Because I'm not telling," Ronan caroled out, sing-song. There would be time for stories later.

"He was an idiot," Blue clarified. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she was smiling as she held out her arms. Gansey went over to her, somewhat unsteady on his feet, and let her pull him down into a tight hug. Ronan would feel happier for them once Adam, Mom, and Matthew were back safe. It was hard not to think about the last time he had been looking forward to a reunion after a victory.

Over by the door, Jimi had her hands pressed to her mouth and she was also weeping openly even though she barely knew Gansey. 

"An idiot, you say? Why am I not surprised?" Gansey said, somewhat muffled by having his face pressed into the crook of Blue's neck. Then he pulled back for a moment, still keeping hold of Blue. But... Christmas? Is it really only just Christmas? How?"

"It's Christmas Eve, if you want to be a pedantic asshole about it." Ronan held up Gansey's phone and waggled it back and forth. "You got three missed calls from your folks, and four texts from _Helen_. Deal with it."

Gansey paled, which was not a good look on the recently dying, but he peeled himself away from Blue and took the phone as if the slightest jostle would detonate it. "Oh, goodness." He pulled in a hissing breath when he looked at whatever notifications were on the screen. "I think they're supposed to be at my grandmother's today."

Blue's eyes narrowed. "This would be the bald, racist grandmother?"

"Yes, unfortunately. I have to say that being in a death-like sleep for the holidays had few advantages, but missing that party was one of them."

"I've heard stories," Ronan told Blue gleefully. He had tried to talk Gansey into taking him along last Christmas, just to see what would happen. Gansey had refused.

Gansey stared down at the phone, looking almost as afraid as he had back in Cabeswater when he had learned the terms of Glendower's favor. He sighed. "I suppose I had better -"

Of course, the phone rang right then, and either in a panic or by instinct, Gansey shot it straight into the fireplace with a sharp flick of his wrist. It stopped ringing with an abrupt _crack_.

Ronan howled with laughter and Blue let out an outraged _Gansey!_ at the casual destruction of several hundred dollars worth of phone.

"Smooth move, Dick," Ronan wheezed. The laughing fit had set his head to throbbing again, but he made himself ignore it. Gansey was awake and everything else could just fucking wait.

"So what did happen? Why I was only asleep for three days?"

There was a brief interruption as Jimi came over and fussed at Gansey, insisting that he sit down. Ronan didn't like that Gansey didn't put up too much of a fight about it, and he could see from her scowl that Blue didn't like it much, either.

"I'll go heat up some hot chocolate and make you some toast. You haven't eaten anything in three days," Jimi pointed out.

Gansey let his head loll back against the back of the couch. "I shouldn't be so tired after sleeping for so long." 

"We'll ask Mom about that when she gets back," Blue said, making it sound more like a question than a statement.

Ronan's phone pinged. It was a text from Matthew. He squinted at the screen. Even at its lowest brightness setting it set his eyes to watering.

_did it work_

Another ping:

_is g awake_

Ronan texted back a 'y'. Or possibly a 'u.' Whatever. Matthew would figure it out.

Then he got another text from another number. As soon as he saw who it was, Ronan passed the phone to Gansey. "This one's your problem, Gansey."

Whatever it was, Gansey winced. "My mother is texting you to find out if my phone is turned off."

There was a sharp crack from the fireplace. 

"That's one word for it." Blue still sounded testy about it, and Ronan could only imagine what Adam would have to say on the subject of waste and people with more money than sense.

Christ, but he hoped Adam got back soon. If Matthew had texted as soon as they left Cabeswater...

When Jimi came back in, Ronan told her the others should be back in less than half an hour. She nodded, and he could see her mentally adding up how many more cups of cocoa they would need. Then, Blue coaxed Jimi into helping her out of her chair and onto the couch next to Gansey.

"Don't even think of trying to help," Blue warned Gansey before he could do more than stand halfway up, and he cut short whatever it was he was going to say and dropped back onto the couch.

Blue snuggled into his side, and Gansey put and arm around her shoulder.

"Gross," said Ronan. Then: "Hey! What about me?"

Blue stuck out her tongue. " _Your_ cuddles will have to wait until your b-"

She stopped suddenly, her eyes wide. Then, the most evil grin spread across her face.

"What was that, Jane? Ronan will have to wait until his...?"

Gansey turned to Ronan for clarification, and as soon as he did, Blue raised a finger to her lips. He got her meaning at once. He smirked back at her and she looked very smug indeed.

She patted Gansey's knee. "Never mind. I don't want to ruin the rest of your Christmas surprise. You're getting more than one miracle today."

"Hmm. And here I thought being awake for Christmas was surprise enough, but I suppose I can wait."

The next half hour passed more quickly than Ronan thought it would. 

First, Gansey called his parents from Ronan's phone and told them that he had broken his phone (true, if somewhat misleading) and he was _so_ sorry to miss dinner at Grandmother's (one of the most blatant falsehoods he had ever uttered) and would call again in the morning to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. He still sounded exhausted, but there was something in his voice that made even the thought of questioning him seem ridiculous.

After that, Gansey insisted on being filled in about everything he missed, and it took several repeats of Blue saying that the story should wait until the others got back before Gansey accepted that he wasn't going to hear anything from her or Ronan. He didn't look happy about it, so Ronan figured it wouldn't hurt to throw him a bone.

"Okay, fine. You want a spoiler, here's a spoiler. The short version is, I was a fucking idiot, and now everything is fixed. I'll tell you the full story later. Especially the parts where I was a fucking idiot." He was talking to Gansey, but looking at Blue. Her expression was carefully muted and hard to read, but Ronan thought he was maybe one baby step closer to fixing what he had broken.

Then, they acted like a bunch of geezers and griped about how miserable it was to be unable to walk and/or Too Fucking Tired (Ronan being the 'and' in that and/or). Griping turned quickly to sick jokes, and then Ronan started singing a brilliant parody of 'We Three Kings' only to have Blue rip him up one side and down the other for some shit about 'ableist language' or something. Before he could fire back in his own defense, they heard the slam of a car door, then another, then another. 

"They're back!" Blue called out, and Ronan resented his broken leg more than anything just then.

"Ready for another miracle, Gansey?" he asked, and he couldn't have held back his grin if he tried.

"Peeking is not allowed," Blue informed Gansey, grabbing his chin to turn his gaze away from the window and towards the door. 

Ronan waited. This was going to be good.

The door swung open, letting in a blast of cold. The ravens still circled around and called out in celebration of their king, but they no longer filled the entire world with noise. Calla bustled in, chafing her hands together against the cold. "Please tell me - "

"Jimi made her special cocoa," Blue finished for her. "Is everyone okay?" She was trying to stay calm, but Ronan heard the worry in her voice.

"Peachy." Calla nodded when she saw Gansey. "Good. You're awake. I'm glad I didn't freeze my ass off out there for nothing. How are you feeling?"

"Tired and weak, but better than when I first woke. I - Good lord! Mrs. Lynch!?"

Mom walked in just behind Calla and Maura, golden hair dusted with snow and cheeks pink with cold. Ronan thought he would never get tired of seeing her just being there, awake and alive and so very real. "Happy Christmas, Gansey. I'm so glad you're awake to join us."

Gansey recovered his cool very quickly and turned to Ronan with a blinding smile. "You did it! You woke her!"

"Side effects of fixing the ley line," Ronan said, as smug as if he'd known all of this would happen.

"Well, I'd say this is quite the Christmas miracle. Welcome home, Mrs. Lynch," he said, tilting his head to accept the kiss she brushed against his cheek. As for Ronan, he quickly adjusted the back of his hoodie to cover any stray bits of tattoo that might be showing at the base of his neck. Blue smirked at him.

"It's good to see you again, Richard," Mom said. Ronan noticed she did not say it was good to be back. He supposed it couldn't be good, not entirely, not with Dad and Declan gone. But he knew she wasn't sorry to be back.

"For the record, this isn't the miracle we were talking about," Blue said. Her mouth twitched with a suppressed smile. Ronan knew the feeling.

Gansey's brows drew together in puzzlement, but before he could say anything, most of the others walked in. Ronan could see as he registered who was there, eyes lighting first on Matthew, who was the loudest, then Artemus, who was the tallest, and then his eyes went wide before squinting in an attempt to see more clearly. 

Then his eyes shot wide again. He got shakily to his feet, and whatever he was trying to say got stuck in his throat.

"Hey, Gansey," Adam said in that quiet voice Ronan loved so much. He stood there with his hands jammed deep into the pockets of Dad's old barn coat, looking happy and nervous and so god-damned beautiful Ronan could hardly stand it.

Gansey turned, gape-mouthed and bright-eyed, to Ronan as if to confirm that this was real. Ronan nodded, and he knew that his grin had turned to a genuine smile for once.

"It's a long story, and yeah, it's really him," he said, and then Gansey took a step towards Adam, and Adam closed the distance and they pulled each other into a fierce hug.

"It's good to be back, Gansey. And it's good to have you back."

"I... thank god. _Thank god_."

Gansey pulled back for a moment, hands on Adam's shoulders, taking in the reality of him. Then, he stilled and tilted his head to one side in puzzlement.

"Your eyes..." he began, and Adam let out a huff of annoyance.

"I know. It's a long story."

The corner of Gansey's mouth lifted, and then he laughed as Matthew half-tackled him with an enthusiastic hug. "I've been hearing that a lot this morning."

"It's been an eventful few days," Maura observed in the kind of dry voice that suggested she really needed a stiff drink. She walked over to the couch and ruffled Blue's hair. Blue made a not very believable attempt to swat her mother's hand away. "I don't even know where on earth to begin."

"Ronan informed me that the short version had to do with him being an idiot and that everything was fixed," Gansey said, pitching it as more of a question than a statement. 

Even though Ronan knew he had to tell his part in this, he still looked away, not wanting to see Maura's face. In turning, he looked out the bay window where a Christmas tree should stand, and saw the ravens circling and calling out in a celebratory dance.

They weren't the only ones dancing, though. Gwenllian was out there, too, circling and swaying with her arms spread in mimicry of flight. At some point since Ronan had seen her last, she had shed all of the various objects and bits of trash from her thick, black hair, and it flowed around her as she swooped and swirled and laughed. 

Ronan couldn't get a good look at her face, but what he could see made him wonder if more than one broken thing had been set on the road to repair today. But there were so many things that had been broken. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he been wrong when he told Gansey that everything had been fixed. Some things would never be fixed, and some might only ever be fixed part way, but for today, they could be glad for the things that _had_ been made right.

"I'd say there's a bit more to it than Ronan being an idiot." Adam had come around behind him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. Ronan leaned into the touch, and it gave him what he needed to face the room again.

"Yeah. Part of it's _her_ fault," he said, jerking a thumb towards the window and the woman dancing outside. "Remember that song she kept playing over and over before you went down for your long winter's nap?"

Gansey shuddered. "How could I possibly forget? I think the lyrics are burned into my memory."

"So she _was_ being helpful," Maura observed. She nodded as if setting some thought to rest inside her own head. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."

Ronan thought about mentioning the other help he'd had, but he wouldn't, not until he talked to Adam about what he thought he had figured out. There was no point in raising false hope.

"So anyhow, there are some parts of this story that aren't mine to tell," he said. He caught Matthew's eye, and he also reached up to rest his hand over Adam's, letting him know that there were some details of their trials that he wouldn't share. "But it all started with how I was stupid enough to get myself lost in the woods..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: A brief time jump, some summing up, and one last mystery is finally solved.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time passes. Life goes on. Adam and Ronan have one more job to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we are at the final chapter. Please note that this entire story was plotted out before TRK came out, so some of what you'll see about certain characters is based on some of what I hoped could happen in TRK.
> 
>  **NOTE:** If the last time you read this story was prior to late August, please make sure you've read chapters 17 and 18 before you read this one, as I posted the last three chapters in a clump.

December rolled into January. Adam, Matthew, and Gansey returned to Aglionby. 

Ronan did not.

This rankled him more than he thought it would. 

Yeah, he fucking hated school, but more than that, he hated being told he _couldn't_ go, even if he wanted to. The kicker was when the admissions office said that given he had to withdraw mid-year due to 'circumstances beyond his control,' he would be more than welcome to re-do his senior year - assuming he paid tuition for the whole year. Oh, and he would be on strict academic probation, of course.

Fuck that. 

If going to Aglionby sucked, going there without Gansey and Adam while having to mind his p's and q's would be like throwing himself into a sack of festering shit and then following that up with a nice acid bath.

"But I'd be there!" Matthew protested, and now Ronan got to add a heap of guilt onto an already shitty situation. 

Then there was the issue of what the hell he would do once he was recovered enough to get out and about. By New Year's, he was miles away from being anything resembling better, but things had improved to the point where he was already seeing the first signs of an epic case of the stir-crazies.

It was Calla, oddly enough, who saw the way through to a solution. One day, when she was dropping Jimi off for a visit (because of course Jimi and Mom had become the fastest of friends just as Maura had predicted), she marched straight up to Ronan and dropped brochure after brochure on his lap. "Online GED program, which you can probably kick in the ass in a few months, tops. This one's about Virginia State's Agriculture program, and maybe try reading through it before rolling your eyes at me, you insufferable brat. And saving the best for last, here's some stuff about their Agricultural Extension program - you don't get a degree, but you _will_ learn the ins and outs of what you need to get this place up and running as a real farm and not Niall Lynch's Cabinet of Curiosities. Hell, you might not even need the GED if you go the extension route. And you can even do some of it online."

She raised an eyebrow when Ronan picked up one of the brochures without protest or a snide remark.

"Virginia State, huh?" he mused.

He liked the idea of the extension program. He could learn what he needed to know without all the shitting around to get a piece of paper he'd just as soon use to wipe his ass. More than that, he liked the idea of turning the Barns into an actual farm.

There was part of him, though, that wasn't writing college off entirely, not just yet. Some of that had to do with Mom, and some of it was all tangled up with Adam, but what he didn't know was how much of it was _him_. He looked at the brochure, focusing on the pictures and the headlines because today was a bad vision day. He put the brochure down but he had determined that he actually would read through it when he could. Just because he applied, it didn't mean he had to go. Plus, he could always drop out if the bullshit levels got too high.

Besides that, the school's team name was apparently the "Trojans," which was just so awful it crashed through horrible and landed square in the realm of awesome.

Next Christmas, everyone would get tee shirts. Everyone.

The first two weeks back at Aglionby, Gansey missed more days of school than he attended, thanks to bouts of weakness that made it impossible to get out of bed or that had him nodding off in the middle of history class. According to Artemus, this had something to do with the whole mystical kingship gig that Gansey had taken on, and how the land mirrored the king and blah, blah, whatever. 

Ronan gave up trying to follow the explanation less than halfway through, but he understood enough to get that winters would probably suck for Gansey from here on out and that it would be absolutely hilarious if he got Gansey a box of condoms in honor of the first day of spring.

Blue missed her first few days back at school while arrangements were made for transportation to and from. Ronan overheard this from Jimi, who marveled at how quickly the red tape was cleared up and how wonderfully helpful the school had been in accommodating Blue's needs when they'd been less helpful about smaller things in the past.

When Ronan asked Gansey if _maybe_ Senator Gansey just _might_ have made a few phone calls and _perhaps_ a few promises-slash-threats, Gansey turned bright red but said nothing other than "for the love of god, don't say anything to Blue."

Ronan said he wouldn't. He knew better, especially after the whole physical therapy debacle. Blue had been offended to the point of incandescent fury over Gansey's breezy declaration that he would pay for the whole thing, but she was less angry at Gansey for offering than she was at her mother for accepting without consulting Blue. 

Ronan didn't know the details of how things had shaken out, but he gathered from Mom that Jimi had said that Blue was going to therapy three times a week and it was going well. Also, Gansey was staying at Fox Way instead of Monmouth while struggling through the world's worst case of SAD, and Ronan hadn't heard any explosions, so things were probably okay.

Ronan dreamed two more pieces of red glass. They were noticeably smaller than the ones he had dreamed before.

Mom finally noticed the tattoo. The less said about that, the better.

Adam spent more and more time at the Barns, even if it meant driving out there after his warehouse shift ended at ten. One night, when Mom told Adam he was more than welcome to move in if he'd rather save his rent money to put towards college, Ronan saw the inevitable stiffening of Adam's spine, and the way his mouth tightened in preparation for a venomous retort, but nothing came of it. Instead, Adam visibly willed himself to relax and then said quietly and sincerely that he appreciated the offer and would give it some thought and let her know.

Mid-January, Ronan dreamed the High Priestess card again. This time, there were only a few hints of color on it, and some of the lines were pencil, not ink. Adam said they would have to do something soon, but the time wasn't right.

Over the next two weeks, four of the cows eventually woke up. The rest never did. As the days slid by and began to lengthen, the sleeping cows continued to lose depth, color, detail, form, and - eventually - existence. Ronan wondered if he should ask Mom or one of the Fox Way people if it meant anything that the cows who woke up were also the ones who had been more like pets than livestock, but he figured that was a question that could wait a while. 

Ronan added it to the list of all the other questions that were going to need to wait a while. Some of those questions, especially the ones about Dad, might wait for even longer than that.

Adam now spent more time at the Barns that he did at St. Agnes, but he did not move in. 

Gansey missed only two more days of school in the latter part of January, and the days were starting to get noticeably longer.

The physical therapist told Blue that if things kept progressing the way they were, there was a good chance she would be able to walk across the stage to get her diploma.

By the end of January, Ronan was able to get around well enough with crutches and a lighter, removable cast as long as he promised not to overextend himself. Feeding the cows did not count as overextending himself, but he was more than happy to stick Matthew with stall-cleaning duty. 

He still slept more than he liked, sunglasses were a way of life even on cloudy days, and some days were nothing but headache from dawn to dusk, but the mental fog and blank spots were definitely, if slowly, improving. At least, it felt like it was improving. Mostly Some days were better than others.

On February first, they had a thaw, and there was the promise of something green in the smell of the cool, damp air. Also, Ronan woke up with a piece of red glass in his hand.

This one was barely the size of a penny. Ronan showed it to Adam when he got home from school (Adam still did not call the Barns 'home,' but Ronan knew better). 

Adam frowned, but said nothing until later that night.

"Tomorrow's February second," Adam said as they were getting ready for bed. Officially, Adam was staying in Ronan's room while Ronan slept in the guest room on the ground floor, but Mom usually went to bed early enough that she didn't notice if Adam didn't go upstairs to sleep. Or if she did, she didn't let on.

"And what? If I see my shadow, I'll have six more weeks on crutches?"

"Very funny, Lynch." Adam held up the chip of glass. "February second is Imbolc. What used to be thought of as the first day of spring?"

Ronan nodded. He had vague and patchy memories of thinking they might be able to wake Gansey in early February instead of in late March.

"Yeah, and?"

"And I think it's time," Adam said. He studied the glass again. "And I think we're running _out_ of time. I'll call in sick to school tomorrow."

It took Ronan a moment longer than it should have to figure out what Adam was talking about, but then he nodded. "We're going to have to go into Cabeswater, aren't we? That's gonna be rough trying to do that on crutches."

It wasn't quite a protest. He would go even if he was still in that damned wheelchair.

"I might be able to do something about that," Adam said. He smiled, and the green flecks in his eyes caught the light for just a moment and seemed to glow.

"Yeah. You might."

They woke up early the next morning, Ronan curled awkwardly against Adam's back, one arm wrapped around him and his hand splayed over Adam's heart. He wallowed for a moment in the fact that Adam was there and alive, and then Adam rolled over towards him.

"You ready for another miracle, Lynch?"

They got ready quietly so as not to wake Mom, got in the Hondayota, and left the Barns before sunrise.

"I need to dream you a better smelling car," Ronan said with a sneer. He pressed the 'play' button for the cassette deck, but nothing happened. He pressed it again.

"Oh, I took out all of the tapes," Adam said far too cheerfully. "Murder Squash didn't seem to fit the mood."

Ronan grumbled and hunched down in his seat as they headed down the long drive, careful not to jostle his leg too much. With the moon out, and sunrise not too far off, he could make out the scar and gap where the BMW had gone off the road. The gap was wider now, thanks to Matthew taking a tractor in there to tow the car out.

He didn't realized he'd reached out and put his hand on Adam's leg until Adam put his hand on top of Ronan's and squeezed gently. 

"This summer..." Ronan began.

Adam made a questioning 'hm?'

"I'm going to fix up the Beemer."

"You're not going to dream a new one, like you did with the Pig?" Adam asked, and Ronan was surprised that he sounded surprised.

Ronan didn't know how to explain it, and he probably wouldn't want to if he could. Part of it felt like a 'fuck you,' and part of it felt uncomfortably like atonement, but something about bringing the car back to life the long way around felt profoundly right. He might have to dream a few parts, especially the ones that weren't exactly factory standard, but the thought of doing any more than that left his stomach feeling sour.

"Nah. I'm going to do it the old fashioned way because I'm a masochistic asshole." He paused, hoping the pause was long enough to sound casual. "Let me know if you want to join in or something. I mean, if you're not working eighty hours a day or some shit like that."

If Adam rolled his eyes any harder, he'd sever an optic nerve.

"It sounds an awful lot like you're trying not to say that you don't know enough about cars to do it yourself and you need my help."

Ronan gave him a sneer, and Adam kept his eyes on the road with a smile that said he was about two seconds from laughter.

"Course I'll help," Adam said before Ronan could fall into too much of a sulk. "I wouldn't miss it for anything."

"Awesome." God, Ronan loved him so much.

They rode the rest of the way out to Cabeswater in silence. It was a tense silence, not uncomfortable, but full of all the things that could potentially be said but weren't.

Ronan did not talk about how the summer car-repair project was also about spending as much time with Adam as he could before Adam went to Harvard or Stanford or where-the-hell-ever in the fall. Or how he was shit-scared that his memory and the headaches and blurry vision were going to stop getting any better. Or how there were so many things he wanted to ask Mom about Dad but probably never would. Or how part of him was afraid of what might happen to him and Adam when they went back into Cabeswater.

As for Adam, Ronan could only guess at what he was wasn't saying, but his guesses would probably be closer than most people's. Other people might have thought Adam's face unreadable, but Ronan saw hunger warring with a fear of hoping too much. Ronan slipped his hand into his pocket and felt the pieces of glass there. He liked how they were smooth on one side and a little rough on the other. 

They would find out soon enough if they were right. There was no more point in talking about it.

They got to Cabeswater a little while before sunrise. It should give them enough time to get into the forest proper - assuming Ronan didn't put a crutch in a gopher hole or something.

"Ready?" Adam asked once Ronan had struggled out of the car. He didn't say anything about Ronan's insistence he could do it on his own, but there was a glimmer of amused pride in those green-flecked eyes.

Yeah, sure, they were two stubborn assholes, but Ronan thought of that as more of a feature than a bug.

"Fuck no. But let's light this up." 

Adam flicked on a flashlight, lighting the way so Ronan could hobble up the slight rise to the edge of the woods. Adam stayed a few paces behind even though he could have left Ronan in the dust. The forest ahead of them was winter-dormant, but the air smelled more of earth and green than ice and cold. The trees and undergrowth were bare, and Ronan knew that the carpet of leaves hid ruts and roots and patches of ice.

"You're gonna be okay," Adam said, and Ronan thought he could hear the clatter of bare branches overhead as he spoke. He finally walked past Ronan and stepped into the woods. He walked a few yards ahead, then turned and looked over his shoulder. "I promise."

Adam's eyes looked more green than blue, and Ronan didn't think it was just a trick of the light any more than the faint echo of his voice in the trees was a trick of the wind. He muttered a few curses under his breath, then followed, testing the ground with his crutches before putting any weight on them.

About ten yards in, he gave up testing the ground because following Adam was just as easy as crossing the living room. Easier, even. The smell of moss and earth was everywhere despite the cold, and he felt traces of a warm, wet breeze that came from a different time than this. There was also a tug deep in his chest that felt the way rushing water sounded, and he knew this was what Adam was following.

How stupid they had been to imagine that these trees - no more than a century or two old at most - were anything but a distant shadow of the real Cabeswater.

They made their way deeper into the woods. There were no leaves on the trees - no surprise, given that it was February, but the woods were so thick that they could barely see the lightening sky through the bare branches. Ronan didn't want to think of what it would be like to try to make his way if the forest - or Adam - wasn't making it easy for them. It was hard to see Adam up ahead of him, and Ronan wasn't entirely sure it was only because of the dim light. There were times when Adam looked like a shadow, or a negative space between the trees, but then Adam would turn to check on him, and he would be _there_ again.

"We're almost there," Adam said, and his voice came from all around Ronan as the warm breeze picked up.

They hadn't talked yet about how Adam's second deal with Cabeswater had changed him, but Ronan wasn't sure that it was the sort of thing you could just _talk_ about without getting large parts of it wrong. Ronan knew that Adam had already asked Gansey to back off on the topic more than once.

"If I start whining, are you going to threaten to turn the car around?" Ronan asked him.

Adam laughed, loud and free and uncomplicated, and Ronan had to wonder if the biggest changes in Adam didn't have as much to do with the soul of an ancient forest as it did with a scared and lonely child who could finally believe that someone loved him.

"Here we are," Adam said as he walked into a space that barely qualified as a clearing. They were near the top of a ridge with a steep drop-off, and the trees were thin enough here that they could see the eastern horizon and the sliver of red light that marked the beginning of sunrise. There was a small pool of water at Adam's feet. To one side of it was a fallen log that was just the right height for someone with a bum leg to sit and rest.

"Nice setup," Ronan said. 

"Just hand me the glass and the card, Lynch," Adam said, but Ronan thought he sounded pleased. Ronan handed them over, and Adam carefully placed five pieces of the red glass around the small pool as if forming a rim around a scrying bowl. He adjusted one of the pieces a fraction of an inch, then slipped the sixth, smallest, piece into his pocket and motioned for Ronan to sit down.

Once Adam was settled, he held the card out over the pool of water. The water was very still, far more still than it should be in the breeze crossing the top of the ridge. "Think you'll have any trouble falling asleep?"

Ronan snorted in derision. These days, his trouble was with staying awake. "I'm more worried about you," he said, making it sound like a dig at Adam's competence.

He couldn't help thinking about what happened the last time Adam had used a forest pool to scry.

Adam just shook his head wearily, then let go of the card.

The card drifted down in a broad spiral and landed gently in the water, setting off a series of ripples that scattered the dawn light. 

Ronan drifted into quiet and thoughts of Adam and fell asleep.

When he woke into a dream, it was spring and his vision was clear and steady. He had forgotten what that was like.

Adam was already on his feet, and he flashed a smile when he saw that Ronan was awake. "Well, that was easier than last time. Here's hoping the rest of this is just as easy."

"Don't jinx us, asshole." Ronan enjoyed the novelty of being able to get to his feet like it was nothing, but he was also pissed off that it was novel enough to enjoy. He shook his head as if clearing water from his ears because the lack of headache was just that fucking weird. In fact, he felt a little high. Thoughts snapped through his mind with no fog and no clutter to get in their way. He laughed and stretched as tall as he could, lacing his fingers together as he pushed his hands up towards green leaves and blue, blue sky.

"You know, I could really get used to this place. Maybe I can ride out the rest of my recovery in here. What do you think, Parrish?"

Adam just looked at him, face carefully unreadable. "That wouldn't be a good idea. This isn't like a normal dream, not when we're in this deep." 

Ronan blinked at him in confusion. He had been joking... mostly.

Adam sighed. "Trust me. We really don't want to stay in here any longer than we have to."

His temper surged hot, but it wasn't at Adam.

"Yeah? Well, what I _do_ want is to feel like myself again!" he shouted, and then he froze at the startled flinch from Adam, from the brief glimpse he got of that frightened child. In fact, he couldn't be sure Adam hadn't actually _become_ that child again for just a second. 

How stupid of him to have thought that just because they'd passed that third trial, that the hurt, frightened child wasn't still there.

Ronan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His temper still sparked and snapped, but he was able to keep it at bay when he thought of Blue and when he thought of the look he never, ever wanted to see on Adam's face again.

He opened his eyes again, and started over. "Please. I just... I feel like me again. Is it wrong to want that? Is it?"

Adam's mouth had gone tight and straight, but it relaxed a bit. "You won't feel like yourself for much longer if you stay in here. Do you want to end up lost, the way I was? Do you want to end up like one of them? Because that's what will happen if you decide you're not gonna wake up." 

He pointed off into the woods. A faint figure of a man with a bowler hat flickered in the shadows. He grew fainter, then younger, then older again.

"You _have_ been getting better, and you're gonna keep on getting better, Ronan," Adam said, and it came from all around them in the rustling of leaves and the clattering of branches, but the warmth of Adam's hand on his shoulder said that Adam was right there next to him. "I promise. It's gonna get better."

But it would take time, and better didn't necessarily mean all the way back to what he was. Besides, promises weren't guarantees. He thought of his older self, and how he had been strong enough to take Ronan in a fight with no trouble at all. He also thought of how his older self wore a wedding ring and argued with the forest in its own language, and he sighed and shook his head, laughing under his breath. 

Promises weren't guarantees, but they were still promises. Some would inevitably be broken, but others might be kept.

"Keep reminding me of that, will ya, Parrish?"

"Sure. And I'll also remind you that you said that the next time you rip my head off for being, and I quote, 'a fucking Pollyanna.'" He leaned in and put his hand on the side of Ronan's head and pulled him into a soft kiss that tasted of spring and didn't last nearly long enough. "Come on. Let's do this. But first..."

Adam nodded towards the man in the bowler hat. Ronan nodded, then took a deep breath and walked straight towards the man. Ronan wondered how the man's soul had gotten stuck on the ley line. Was he a psychic? A dreamer? Someone who made a bargain? A casualty of the ley line getting unmoored in time? Whatever it was, there wasn't enough left of the man to tell him. All that was left were some scraps of identity and the core of his soul, and if something didn't happen soon, there wouldn't even be that.

Ronan held out his hand and waited. The man in the bowler hat hesitated a moment and then took it. There was a rush of impressions, the feeling of someone tentatively testing a new ability, a sense of curiosity, fragments of memory - a laughing woman, a crying child, scraps of an argument - and then a burst of remembered terror as something went wrong, so very wrong. Surrounding and mixed in with it all, Ronan felt the ley line humming. Ronan held on to the scraps of memory and the bright core of soul that felt as warm and fragile and fleeting as a baby field mouse. He held on and gently pried them loose from the ley line, focusing on bringing the man out much as he would focus on an item he wanted to bring back from a dream. 

And then he let go.

 _Thank you_ , he felt more than heard, and then the man was gone. Escaped, Ronan thought. 

"Huh."

There was something about it that felt like the first time he had taken deliberate hold of a dream and _knew_ that he could bring it out with him, but this felt more... well, _more_. It felt like something had finally clicked into place deep within himself.

"We'll probably run into a few more. I'll let you know if we don't have time for you to stop and help them out," Adam said. "And just because we can't stay here doesn't mean we can't come back for them."

"Yeah," Ronan said, voice rough. He had a million more questions now about what Dad had known or hadn't known about his dreams. He thought about how little Artemus didn't know about dreamers and wondered how long it had been since there had been anyone who might have been able to answer the one question that lay beneath all of the others he hadn't asked:

_What am I?_

For the first time in a very long time, Ronan thought he might be able to find that out. And for the first time ever, he found he wasn't afraid of what the answer might be.

"Are you ready to do this, Lynch?"

Ronan heard the unspoken _are you okay?_ in Adam's question and nodded brusquely.

Adam pulled the last piece of red glass out of his pocket and held it out in his palm. He stared down at it for a moment, and his shoulders hunched in a way that reminded Ronan way too much of how the younger version of Adam was too scared to be comforted. This Adam, Ronan realized, was too scared to hope.

Ronan bumped shoulders with him, which earned a glare, but at least got Adam to un-hunch. "Are _you_ ready to do this, Parrish?"

Adam nodded, but said nothing. Ronan guessed from the brightness in his eyes that he didn't trust himself to say anything just then. Adam held up the piece of glass and turned in a slow arc until it glowed. "This way," he said, and then headed off into the woods.

Ronan followed. Even though his leg was healed in this dream, it was still slower going than in the waking world. The undergrowth had surged into greenness with a vengeance, and the ground had gone soft with the thaw. He also had to stop from time to time when a half-faded figure approached, silently pleading to be allowed to move on.

How the hell was he supposed to say 'no?'

Adam kept moving, and he was even harder to see than he had back in the waking world. He was a movement in the trees, a shifting of shadows, the shape of a branch. The only reason Ronan was sure he was still following him was because the shard of red glass was impossible to miss against all the green.

Green of the familiar hickory and oak and maple from today. Green of giant fern-like trees that had blocked out the sky a million years ago. 

Red the color of wine. Glass the color of pomegranate. Red glass that he was now damned sure he had seen before as one intact thing and not a bunch of worn down shards.

Before long, they heard frightened sobbing. It was not the sort of sound that you were normally grateful to hear, but Ronan's knees nearly sagged in relief. Part of him had started to wonder if they had put this off too long.

Or maybe they _had_ to wait until it was what used to be thought of as the first day of spring. Names had meaning, as the Fox Way ladies would say.

They followed the sound of crying until they found Orphan Girl hiding in a hollow beneath a rotted out tree. She was curled up like a pill bug, but Ronan knew that wasn't the only reason she looked so much smaller than before. She was still herself in a way the other lost souls had not been, but she wouldn't be for much longer. She was strong, strong enough to hold on for a very long time, but that strength could only get her so far and he thought she may have used up a lot of what she had left when she helped him after his accident.

When she heard their footsteps, she looked up. Ronan wasn't surprised that she looked even younger than before, but he was surprised that he could now map the childish features to how they would appear on an adult woman. 

How the hell had he missed this before?

Adam must have seen it, too, because he gripped Ronan's shoulder as if to keep from collapsing in relief. "Ronan..." he started, but he couldn't get out whatever he meant to say next.

"I got this, Parrish." And he did. He had done this for Adam. Dad had done this for Mom. He could do this. He was the Greywaren and he thought he was finally starting to get what that meant.

He hunkered down next to her hollowed-out place. He saw the sigils she had carved in the bark and earth, maybe in an attempt to keep herself together, or maybe to send him all of those reminders that she was here, that she was waiting for him to keep his promise. He held out a hand.

"Hey. Sorry it took so damned long, but this time I'm gonna get you out of here. I promise."

In this case, the promise was a guarantee.

She reached out slowly, cautiously putting her tiny hand in his much larger one. Then, she held tight. So did Ronan. Her hand grew stronger and less tiny as she began to come back to herself. Behind them, Adam laughed in delight. As for Ronan, he was smiling so wide it hurt. But this was a good hurt.

"C'mon, Persephone," he said. "It's time to wake up and go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, that's a wrap! Thank you to everyone who stuck with me throughout this whole long process. Again, I cannot give thanks enough to aishuu for all of her help on this project. 
> 
> I hope I struck the right balance between tying off the major plot threads and leaving some things open ended. If you have any questions about anything I did or didn't do, please don't hesitate to ask.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated.


End file.
